A Room of My Own: Winding Road Home Haiku

winding road home:

forward in space, and yet

backward in time

FYI: My traditional 3-line haiku is written in response to the following visual haiku:

coming home

flower

            by

                flower

San Francisco Haiku Anthology, 1992

Jane Reichhold

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXX: "reality check"

Reality Check

written in response to War Criminal Netanyahu's genocide denial rant at the UN

Did the Nazis 

ask the Jews to leave?

at the UN

the P/Crime Minister shouts

to an almost-empty hall

family

house and olive-lined village

all lost in fireballs ...

even in dreams can she find

an escape route from Gaza 

FYI: Haaretz, Analysis, September 26, 2025: Netanyahu's UN Speech Targeted Two Audiences Only: His Right-wing Base in Israel and Donald Trump

"'Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave? Kindly leave, go?" [Netanyahu] asked rhetorically, as supposed proof that Israel is not acting like the Nazis. Yet it is well known that in the early years of Nazi rule, that is precisely what they did – they actively encouraged the voluntary emigration of Jews from the Reich. Beyond this ill-judged comparison, Netanyahu's speech consisted entirely of recycled talking points that have been repeated ad nauseam in recent months. He offered no new statements about the future of the war in Gaza, nor the possibility of a deal" 

And The Guardian, September 26, 2025: Israeli loudspeakers broadcast Netanyahu’s speech to UN into Gaza:  Operation prompts outrage as Israeli PM criticises western countries for recognising Palestine as a state and pledges to continue war.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXXI: "this fresh morning in the broken world"

This Fresh Morning in the Broken World

lying on the ground

facing each other

in a pool of blood:

a one-legged Gazan boy

and his mud-stained puppy

another day

another refugee tent

another baby

skin loose on her bones

starving to death with open eyes

FYI: The title is taken from “Invitation” by Mary Oliver

...it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning

in the broken world...

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXXII: "high holy days"

High Holy Days

Yom Teruah

pillars of smoke and fire link

Heaven and Gaza

Yom Kippur fasting ...

fifty miles away, a baby's skin

hangs loose on his bones

Gazan skies, tinged red ...

clutching his bible the rabbi 

lost in thought

FYI: The High Holy Days are the most sacred period in Judaism, marked by introspection, repentance, and a focus on the Jewish New Year/Yom Teruah and the Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur.

And yet 

never again rolling tanks (n)ever again bomber after bomber

NeverEnding Story, August 28, 2025

Haaretz, Oct. 2, 2025: 

More than 1,500 Jewish community members gathered in front of Brooklyn Borough Hall for a mass public memorial service on Yom Kippur, calling for an end to what they termed Israel's genocide in Gaza and an end to U.S. arms shipments to Israel.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla of Rabbis for Ceasefire said this year's Yom Kippur required action on the streets. "As a rabbi and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I knew Yom Kippur had to be different this year," Kukla said. "I couldn't just quietly pray for atonement from inside a synagogue. We must be out here... crying out that we say no to genocide, no to ethnic cleansing, and no to the use of our tax dollars to bomb entire families."

Added:

why? I mumble

as the coffin is lowered

slate-gray clouds

Added:

the open eye

of an elk with no antlers

the sky tinged red

Poetic Musings: (M)otherland Tanka by Chen-ou Liu

years in exile ...

moonlight rippling

the Pacific,

this narrow path

to the (M)otherland

First Place, Tanka, 2024 San Francisco International Competition

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary: This tanka has every quality of tanka that I love. It is lyrical, has mystery, and is especially creative in its use of language. It stands out, of course, for the parenthetical (M).This unusual element draws attention to multiple meanings, and is subtle and powerful. What can be closer than the mother, and yet estrangement, by geography, emotion, or rules, is heartbreaking. And the long narrow way back, in the night, traveling by moonlight, is very moving and speaks to all the separations and current difficulties our hearts are dealing with in our current affairs... excerpted from the judge's comments

FYI: This tanka could be read as a sequel to the following tanka and tanka sequence:

alone again

on the Pacific shore ...

winter moonlight

forming a narrow path

to the land I left behind

Cattails, September 2016

In Taipei, I still long for Taipei

ten years past

and alone in the moonlight

I have changed

and my hometown has changed

but we haven't changed together

I try to change

this idea of my hometown

people pass me by

with their eyes speaking in a code

that is foreign to me

the vendor asks,

are you from mainland China?

the look in his eyes

speaks the language

of a border guard

this journey

back to my hometown

ends 

with another one

on the road of no return

Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, 13, April 2023

And I also won two honorable mentions of the tanka category:

a flock of geese

through the shelter window

a deaf veteran

touches again and again

the sound of home

Honorable Mention

Thanksgiving moon

sparks on the rippling water

of Lake Ontario ...

from his cupped, calloused hands

a migrant's taste of home

Honorable Mention

One Man's Maple Moon: Final Glance Tanka by Sonam Chhoki

English Original

a final glance

through rain-splatttered screen

my ancestral home

so much left behind

so much carried with me

Atlas Poetica, 9, Summer 2011

Sonam Chhoki 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

透過雨滴濺濕的紗窗

的最後一瞥

我的祖屋

留下這麼多東西未帶走

我仍然帶走這麼多東西

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

透过雨滴溅湿的纱窗

的最后一瞥

我的祖屋

留下这么多东西未带走

我仍然带走这么多东西

Bio Sketch

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing.  She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan's non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the United Haiku and Tanka Society journal, cattails.

Butterfly Dream: Homecoming Haiku by Fay Aoyagi

English Original

homecoming

the unfamiliar feel

of once-familiar coins

Acorn, 49, Fall 2022

Fay Aoyagi

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

歸國返鄉

對於曾經熟悉的硬幣

感到陌生的感覺

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

归国返乡

对于曾经熟悉的硬币

感到陌生的感觉

 

 

Bio Sketch

Fay Aoyagi （青柳飛）was born in Tokyo and immigrated to the U.S. in 1982. She is currently a member of Haiku Society of America and Haiku Poets of Northern California. She serves as an associate editor of The Heron's Nest.  She also writes in Japanese and belongs to two Japanese haiku groups; Ten'I (天為) and "Aki"（秋), and  she is a member of Haijin Kyokai (俳人協会).

Poetic Musings: Lost Homeland Tanka by Chen-ou Liu

ten years later 

back to my country of birth 

an immigrant again 

unmoored by longing 

for a lost homeland

Honorable Mention, The British Haiku Society Awards 2022

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary (by the Judge): We live in a state of flux. The poet examines how time changes our memories and expectations until they become at odds with the present. In discovering this we develop more empathy for others.

Note: My tanka sequence below, In Taipei, I still long for Taipei, could be read as a further exploration of "how time changes our memories and expectations until they become at odds with the present:"

In Taipei, I still long for Taipei

ten years past

and alone in the moonlight

I have changed

and my hometown has changed

but we haven't changed together

I try to change

this idea of my hometown

people pass me by

with their eyes speaking in a code

that is foreign to me

the vendor asks,

are you from mainland China?

the look in his eyes

speaks the language

of a border guard

this journey

back to my hometown

ends 

with another one

on the road of no return

Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, 13, April 2023

Poetic Musings: Moon Festival by Chen-ou Liu

Moon Festival

alone, I whisper to myself

in my mother tongue

Editor's First Choice, Showcase Haiku Haijin, No. 1 

Sketchbook, 6:5, September/October 2011

Commentary (by Sketchbook Editor, John Daleiden): "Moon Festival" is an ancient Chinese cultural event occurring on the 15th of the 8th lunar month; the festival is a millennium-old festival, dating back to 2000 years ago. Different regions or groups of people have different ways to celebrate the festival. Generally speaking, it is mainly a night for family sharing time. Today, it is celebrated sometime between the second week of September and the first week of October. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional festivals; in the West traditions like Thanksgiving and Christmas are culturally similar in tenor to Eastern traditions like the Moon Festival. The celebration has many aspects. It is a very poetic and elegant celebration—people place ornaments and offerings next to windows, on verandas, and in other places where the moon can be seen in conjunction with items like vases filled with pampas grass and autumnal herbs—people prepare seasonal foods like dumplings, pears, persimmons, and grapes. Moon Festival is an occasion for family reunions, similar to the family events associated with an American (Western) Thanksgiving and / or Christmas. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes and sing moon poems (World Haiku DataBase).

The kigo, “Moon Festival” is laden with cultural meaning—and much of that meaning may be obscure to readers unfamiliar with Chinese traditions. In Chen-ou Liu’s haiku the kigo “Moon Festival” is a simplistic statement with a rich cultural message; that message is one of the advantages of haijian who use kigo. The kigo found in a saijiki have been selected because they, in a word or two, express volumes of meaning. In her World Haiku Data Base Dr. Gabi Greve has collected the information above about “Moon Festival”. …And in employing this kigo Chen-ou Liu is expressing the sentiments in a millennium of Chinese cultural custom. In the world of haiku, kigo carries out a rhetorical function that Western writers call understatement—a figure of speech in which a writer / speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. The direct and denotative kigo statement, “Moon Festival”, shows restraint and a lack of emphasis, when in point of fact the phrase is an understatement that really conveys a host of implied and connotative details expressed in the previous paragraph. The kigo is the most important element in this haiku and it is balanced against the second most important element, the word “alone”. In this haiku the narrator finds himself in a painful situation on this family occasion—he is “alone”, isolated from the meaningful events and occasions of his past. These two elements of this haiku offer a contrast of the past with the present—and the two situations are painfully different. Through understatement Chen-ou Liu displays a severe contrast between the descriptive details of what usually takes place during a “Moon Festival” and what in reality is taking place for the narrator on this particular “Moon Festival”—he is alone. His subsequent action: “I whisper to myself / in my mother tongue” is a second understated event. He “whispers” and his chosen expression is “in my mother tongue” a language he probably no longer uses for daily communication, having had to learn a new language because the environment in which he lives does not use his “mother tongue” for communication. This haiku uses simple language embedded in a complex structure; this haiku is a memorable example of restraint in artistic expression. Through understatement the reader comes to comprehend what is not being said directly and understands the pain the narrator is experiencing.

Note: Below is a relevant excerpt from  "Featured Poet: An Evaluation and Introspective Look at the Haiku of Chen-ou Liu by Robert D. Wilson" (Simply Haiku, Autumn 2010):

... The first poem I ever memorized was [Li Po's] “Thoughts in Night Quiet,” the best known of all Chinese poems, especially among Chinese living overseas:

Seeing moonlight here at my bed,
and thinking it's frost on the ground,

I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,
then back, dreaming of my old home.

-- translated by David Hinton

When I was six, my father recited this poem to me with watery eyes. At that time, he hadn’t seen his family for two decades since he came to Taiwan in 1949, with the defeated Chinese Nationalist Army. I memorized the poem and didn’t fully reflect upon its meaning in my heart and mind. Little was understood about the suffering endured by my father and his generation due to the Chinese Civil War. It was not until the seventh year since I emigrated to Canada that I’d experienced this pang of nostalgic longing explored in Li’s poem through the moon imagery – a symbol of distance and family reunion – portrayed in simple and evocative language. Since then, every time when I thought of my parents, my family, and my hometown, I recited “Thoughts in Night Quiet,” which is not only Li’s poem but also mine...

To conclude today's post, I would like to share with you the following tanka:

written both for the Chinese Moon Festival

and in response to Haruki Murakami's remark: All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. 

alone again

in this Land of Maple Leaf

with a slice of mooncake

I drink Pinot Noir, dwelling

in nostalgic silence

FYI: Michelin Guide, August 28, 2019: "How To Pair Wine With Mooncakes," 

A Room of My Own: Re-Homing?

old map of Taipei ...

lost again in the backstreets

of my mind

Taipei beach 

sparks from a bonfire 

color my childhood

even in Taipei

I sing along, sing along

to Half of My Hometown

FYI: 

Some went north, some went south

Still lookin' for a feelin' half of us ain't found

So stay or leave

Part of me will always be

Half of my hometown

"Half of my hometown," Kelsea Ballerini,  born and raised in the East Tennessee city of Knoxville, whose song is an ode to her hometown and how her relationship to it changed after leaving.

Added: 

a double-rainbow

breaking through gray clouds

over Buckingham . . .

on its gold and black rails

notice of the Queen's death

Added: This Brave New World, LIII

these Royal

nephews, cousins and suchlike 

jostle for spots 

on Buckingham Palace's balcony ...

kids in a bakery window

FYI: Child Poverty and Action Group, UK: ... There were 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2020-21. That's 27 per cent of children, or eight in a classroom of 30...

But in spite of all the progress that has been made the greatest problem in the world today remains the gap between rich and poor countries and that we shall not begin to close this gap until we hear less about nationalism and more about interindependence.

Queen Elizabeth II, 1983 Christmas Day message

FYI regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the impacts/reflections

1: The Washington Post, September 8: Queen Elizabeth II and the end of Britain’s imperial age, Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor

The days to come will see a surfeit of commentary and analysis of the depth of that legacy. But one narrative is inescapable: Elizabeth ascended the throne 70 years ago as the head of a globe-spanning empire. But she died at a moment of contraction and uncertainty, with most of Britain’s colonies gone, its place in Europe a source of tension, and its global status diminished.

2: The Washington Post, September 8: The day Elizabeth became queen in a treehouse in Kenya,  And FYI: The Seattle Times, February 6, 2017: Queen’s porter at Treetops later joined Mau Mau rebellion

3: The Guardian, August 18, 2016: Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire: The Harvard historian Caroline Elkins stirred controversy with her work on the crushing of the Mau Mau uprising. But it laid the ground for a legal case that has transformed our view of Britain’s past.

Elkins had come to prominence in 2005 with a book that exhumed one of the nastiest chapters of British imperial history: the suppression of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960). Her study, Britain’s Gulag, chronicled how the British had battled this anticolonial uprising by confining some 1.5 million Kenyans to a network of detention camps and heavily patrolled villages. It was a tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups. 

On 6 April 2011, the debate over Caroline Elkins’s work shifted to the Royal Courts of Justice in London...In preparation, Elkins had distilled her book into a 78-page witness statement.

The British government, defeated repeatedly in court, moved to settle the Mau Mau case. On 6 June 2013, the foreign secretary, William Hague, read a statement in parliament announcing an unprecedented agreement to compensate 5,228 Kenyans who were tortured and abused during the insurrection. Each would receive about £3,800. “The British government recognises that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration,” Hague said. Britain “sincerely regrets that these abuses took place.” The settlement, in Anderson’s view, marked a “profound” rewriting of history. It was the first time Britain had admitted carrying out torture anywhere in its former empire.

4: Smithsonian Magazine, "History," September 8: Elizabeth II Was an Enduring Emblem of the Waning British Empire:

Elizabeth spent her first years as queen attempting to secure Britain’s symbolic foothold in a rapidly changing world. After her coronation, she and Philip embarked on a six-month, globe-trotting tour that spanned 13 countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association comprised largely of former British colonies.

“[T]he Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past,” the queen said in her inaugural 1953 Christmas broadcast. “It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man. … To that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life.”

Elizabeth’s reign was marked by rocky periods of intermittent violence abroad, including Britain’s botched attempt to gain control of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the Falklands War, a ten-week-long battle with Argentina in 1982.

Closer to home, the British Army waged its longest military campaign to date: Operation Banner, an effort to establish order during the Troubles, a bloody sectarian conflict that engulfed much of Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1998. The conflict touched Elizabeth directly in 1979, when the Irish Republican Army assassinated her second cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten...

At its apex just a few years before Elizabeth’s birth, the British Empire claimed roughly a quarter of all land on Earth. European colonizers—among them enslavers, traders and investors, including members of the royal family—enriched themselves through the enslavement of African and Indigenous people and the appropriation and exploitation of colonies’ resources.

As the primary spokesperson for the royal family, Elizabeth acknowledged but did not apologize for a long list of British imperial crimes committed in centuries past. The crown continues to deny growing calls for reparations from former colonies.

Note: This "History article" says nothing about the the unfathomable crushing brutality against Kenya's Mau Mau. And Smithsonian is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution, a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. Government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge") 

5: Sunil Khilnani, The New Yorker, March 22, 2022: The British Empire Was Much Worse Than You Realize 

As the sole imperial power that remained a liberal democracy throughout the twentieth century, Britain claimed to be distinct from Europe’s colonial powers in its commitment to bringing rule of law, enlightened principles, and social progress to its colonies. Elkins contends that Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.

We misunderstand the end of empire, Elkins says, because the old liberal imperial historiography focussed more on high policy—the stratagems of what Gallagher and his cohort termed the “official mind”—than on the acts of get-it-done enforcers in the field. 

In “Imperial Reckoning,” Elkins moved deftly between oral and archival histories to describe a British strategy of detention, beatings, starvation, torture, forced hard labor, rape, and castration, designed to break the resistance of a people, the Kikuyu, who, having been dispossessed by the British and then, during the Second World War, enlisted to fight for them, had plenty of reason to resist.

In 1957, a British colonial governor informed his superiors in London that “violent shock” was the only way to break down hard-core adherents, justifying a brutal campaign called Operation Progress. More than a million men, women, and children were forced into barbed-wire village compounds and concentration camps for reëducation in circumstances that the colony’s attorney general at the time called “distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia.”

One Man's Maple Moon: Old Morris Chair Tanka by Edward Rielly

English Original

the old Morris chair
where visitors sat
beside the kitchen door
now mine a thousand miles
from my childhood farmhouse

Edward Rielly


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

過去客人曾坐過
的老莫里斯椅子
放置在廚房門旁邊
現在它離我的童年農舍
有一千英里之遠

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

过去客人曾坐过
的老莫里斯椅子
放置在厨房门旁边
现在它离我的童年农舍
有一千英里之远


Bio Sketch

Edward Rielly directs the Writing and Publishing program at Saint Joseph's College of Maine. His recent books include Bread Pudding and Other Memories, Answers Instead: A Life in Haiku (recipient of the Mildred Kanterman Memorial Award), and the children’s picture books Spring Rain Winter Snow and Jugo Meets a Poet.

One Man's Maple Moon: Native Land Tanka by Elena Calvo

English Original

this winter dawn
drips with pale blue light
once again
leaving behind
my native land

Gusts, 23, Spring/Summer 2016

Elena Calvo


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

這個冬天黎明
潑灑淡藍的天光
再一次
離棄
我的祖國

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

这个冬天黎明
泼洒淡蓝的天光
再一次
离弃
我的祖国


Bio Sketch

Elena Calvo started journaling and writing poetry at the age of seven in her native land, Spain. She writes lyric poetry, essays, aphorisms, haiku and tanka in both English and Spanish. Her work has appeared in different anthologies published in Canada, as well as in OIW, HC, KaDo and Gusts.

Butterfly Dream: Pinch of Spice Haiku by Samantha Sirimanne Hyde

English Original

a song from home --
another pinch of spice
into the stir fry

Chrysanthemum, 18, October 2015

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

來自家鄉的一首歌 --
另一少把香料
放到所炒的菜中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

来自家乡的一首歌 --
另一少把香料
放到所炒的菜中


Bio Sketch

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde was born in Sri Lanka and now lives in Australia. She enjoys dabbling in short fiction, free verse, haiku, tanka and other Japanese poetry forms.

A Room of My Own: Cigar Smoke Haiku

for Cuban exiles living in the USA

first Cuba visit
grandpa's cigar smoke
drifting up and up ...

Butterfly Dream: Fifties Night Haiku by Karen O’Leary

English Original

fifties night
a 45 spins
with a twist

this world, 2013

Karen O’Leary


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

五零年代之夜
四十五轉唱片
歪曲地旋轉
   
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

五零年代之夜
四十五转唱片
歪曲地旋转


Bio Sketch

Karen O’Leary is a writer and editor from West Fargo, ND.  She has published poetry, short stories, and articles in a variety of venues including, Frogpond, A Hundred Gourds, Haiku Pix,  Sharpening the Green Pencil 2014, Now This: Contemporary Poems of Beginnings, Renewals and Firsts, Creative Inspirations, and Poems of the World.  She currently edits an online poetry journal called Whispers.

A Room of My Own: Long Winter Night Tanka

twilight ushers in
a long winter night ...
one by one
thoughts of my hometown
unfolding

A Room of My Own: A Sting to the Heart

the Pacific
between my hometown and me ...
after the rain
a rainbow appears
arching a passageway

twelfth year
to see maple leaves
change color ...
memories fill my body
like flesh and blood

A Room of My Own: CN Tower and Taipei 101 Tanka

this sultry night
I juggle past with present ...
CN Tower
and Taipei 101
fusing into one phallus

Note: Toronto is a place where I meet people from all walks of life, and  Taipei is a city of my birth.

The CN Tower (Canadian National Tower) is a 553.33 m-high concrete communications and observation tower in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Built on the former Railway Lands, it was completed in 1976, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure and world's tallest tower at the time. It held both records for 34 years until the completion of Burj Khalifa and Canton Tower in 2010 -- Wikipedia entry, "CN Tower"

Taipei 101 is a landmark supertall skyscraper in Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest in 2004, and remained such until the opening of Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010. In July 2011, the building was awarded the LEED Platinum certification, and became the tallest and largest green building in the world --Wikipedia entry, "Taipei 101"

A Room of My Own: Old Wound

for Salman Rushdie, author of Imaginary Homelands

first winter light ...
the snake of my desire
for the past
lies coiled around
the base of my spine

an immigrant
living on the winter land
of nostalgia:
the past is my home
although it’s lost

I hear
the siren singing
Home, Sweet Home ...
a part of me
jumps off the cliff

Chinese New Year

on the TV screen ...

I whisper of home

in a voice

now foreign to me

A Toom of My Own: A Tanka about Formosa

In 1544, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it "Ilha Formosa," which means “Beautiful Island.”

all of a sudden ...

my vision blurring

and the words

in From Far Formosa

lifting off the page

Note: For more information about the joshi, see "To the Lighthouse: Joshi (Prefatory Note) as a Poetic Device." From Far Formosa, written by George Leslie Mackay (March 21, 1844 – June 2, 1901), is considered an important early missionary ethnography of Taiwan and an important contribution to the anthropological understanding of the culture and customs of the people of Taiwan during that period.

Poetic Musings: Mid-Autumn Moon Tanka by Chen-ou Liu

mid-autumn night…

the wind whispers to me

Chinese words

that offer me a home

in the shape of a moon

Tanka First Place, 2011 San Francisco International Competition Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Rengay

Commentary by Tanka Judge,  Roberta Beary

The originality of the images coupled with the evocative sense of ‘stranger in a strange land’ merited a 1st Place award.  The first two lines appear to lead to a traditional path.  The third line is the turning point that brings this tanka to the next level. The fourth and fifth lines complete the journey.  After reading this tanka I found myself looking at the moon with new eyes and listening to the language of the wind. 

-- excerpted from "2011 Contest results with judges' comments," Haiku Poets of Northern California

Combined with the opening line, "mid-autumn night," the closing lines, "a home/ in the shape of a moon," allude to the Chinese Moon Festival, and L3, "Chinese words," refers to Li Po's poem, “Quiet Night Thoughts" (Chinese: 靜夜思).

The Chinese Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. Now it is celebrated sometime between the second week of September and the first week of October. It's also known as the Mid-autumn Festival.Different regions or groups of people have different ways to celebrate the festival. Generally speaking, it is mainly a night for family sharing time. During moon viewing, people are constantly moved to share their knowledge about the moon, especially about the moon in Chinese poetry. School-age children or young adults are encouraged to recite moon poems, of which the most famous is Li Po’s “Quit Night Thoughts.” It is believed that this poem is the best known of all Chinese poems, especially among Chinese living overseas.

Seeing moonlight here at my bed,

and thinking it's frost on the ground,

I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,

then back, dreaming of my old home.

-- translated by David Hinton

Li’s poem successfully conveys the nostalgic longing for family through the moon imagery – a symbol of distance and family reunion in the Chinese poetic tradition – portrayed in simple and evocative language. Every time when the Chinese think of their families or hometowns, they recite “Quiet Night Thoughts.”

Note: My another tanka below was the third place winner in the same contest:

her toothbrush

in my medicine chest

declares residency…

gazing at the mirror

a face hard to recognize

Tanka Third Place, 2011 San Francisco International Competition Haiku, Senryu, Tanka,  and Rengay

Commentary by  Tanka Judge,  Roberta Beary

The apparently effortless humor of the poet adds lightness to this tanka and makes it stand out from other submissions.  But there is something more: a conflict present in the last two lines.  This tanka led me toward another reading of Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara. For this I thank the poet.

A Room of My Own: The Pain from an Old Wound

moonstruck
Nostalgia gains momentum
leapfrogging
from Taiwan to Toronto
I'm its colonial subject

my dog
seems to know the length
of its leash
I have no clue
how to measure Nostalgia

go back
to where you came from
Nostalgia screams ...
one kick after another
I see Bruce Lee in the mirror

Note: Bruce Lee (27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) was a Chinese American actor, and he is highly regarded by many commentators and fans as the most influential martial artist of modern times.

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, XXXIX

Taiwan moon
low in the Ajax sky
the weight
of my nostalgia
measured in snowdrifts

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Notes: You can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here.