President’s Message:
A Tanka Turning Point—“Tanka Day”

TSA Tanka Day

The Tanka Society of America Tanka Day on Monday, June 30, 2003, at the Collegiate School in New York City was a resounding success. William Higginson wrote to me to agree: “Overall, a great day! I do hope that this New York meeting will be long remembered as the beginning of a major leap forward for tanka in English.” Indeed, I believe the event will be well remembered and marked as a formative and vital turning point in the unfolding of English-language tanka—and perhaps the first ever [American] conference or meeting to focus solely on tanka in English. Though billed as a day of tanka, I believe the event’s influence will seem much larger.

I’m grateful to everyone who attended the Tanka Day for sharing their poems and adding their individual voices to the discussion, to the speakers who prepared talks or workshops, to Marian Smith Sharpe for coordinating registrations, to Larry Lavenz for processing registration payments, to Paul Ness for kindly arranging the use of school facilities where he works, and to Pamela Miller Ness for many logistical arrangements, not the least of which was the wonderful catering of meals. Elsewhere in this newsletter, you can read a detailed account of the day’s activities by Marian Smith Sharpe, and Peggy Heinrich has written about the previous evening’s tanka banquet.

Those in attendance at the Tanka Day included Pamela Babusci, Angelee Deodhar, Jeanne Emrich, Efren Estevez, Stanford M. Forrester, Barbara Ann Giannacco, Penny Harter, Peggy Heinrich, William J. Higginson, Larry Lavenz, Dorothy McLaughlin, Lenard D. Moore, Pamela Miller Ness, Nicholaes Roosevelt, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, Deborah Russell, Dave Russo, Marian S. Sharpe, Christine Shook, John Stevenson, Brian Tasker, Allen Terdiman, and Michael Dylan Welch. The society even gained several new members at the event! My apologies if I’ve neglected to list anyone who was there (and if I have, please do let me know, for the record).

Many Tanka Day activities will manifest themselves in print in this newsletter, and perhaps elsewhere. In this issue, for example, are a selection of the tan-renga that participants wrote together during our lunch break, as well as poems by tanka writers who had recently passed away, collected by Pamela Miller Ness and read collaboratively by the entire group as a memorial. In addition, some of the presentations from the meeting, starting with William J. Higginson’s, will appear in this and future newsletters. Bill’s presentation, delightfully titled “A Brief Tour Through 1,000 Years of Tanka and How It Got This Way (With Some Reference to Haiku Along the Way),” included numerous translations and a fine pair of handouts overviewing the history and development of waka and tanka in Japan. This talk served as a strong introduction to our full day of talks and presentations. Brian Tasker followed with an intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving paper titled “A Ripening Peach: Tanka as Theatre, Tanka as Ritual” (look for this essay in a future issue of this newsletter). In the afternoon, Pamela Miller Ness gave a convincing presentation titled “To Dot or Not to Dot: The Question of Punctuation in Tanka” regarding her thoughts on how punctuation in tanka differs (or should differ) from how haiku is punctuated. This talk included detailed analysis of different ways tanka have been punctuated in anthologies and by translators. After that, I read a variation of my paper published in the previous newsletter titled “From Chord to Melody: Defining Tanka in English,” and led a group discussion on the topic. The discussion came to less of a definitive conclusion than I might have hoped, but certainly some intriguing thoughts surfaced. For example, a general consensus seemed to be that a haiku tends to start with an experience that produces an emotion in the poet, and then the poet writes about the experience, intending that it will generate the same emotional response in the reader. But with tanka, often the poet starts with an emotion first, and then seeks natural or other symbolism, or personal experience, to represent that emotion, intending that the emotion will be recreated in the reader through the symbols or experience. As a result, perhaps the haiku and tanka poet each approaches emotion from a different direction. This discussion will be useful to the TSA definitions committee as it continues its research (and if you have any comments on defining tanka, please do share them, as Amelia Fielden does elsewhere in this newsletter).

TSA Tanka Banquet

In addition to Tanka Day, the society held a banquet at Sal Anthony’s Restaurant on Irving Place in New York the night before. Those present included most of the people already mentioned as Tanka Day attendees, plus Laura Maffei, editor of American Tanka, who was one of the evening’s featured tanka readers. The other featured readers were Pamela Miller Ness, Brian Tasker visiting from England, and Michael Dylan Welch. We also enjoyed readings and introductions from everyone else present around a giant banquet table in a private room at the restaurant. And a fine choice of accommodating restaurants it was, too!

Tanka Contests

While the TSA Tanka Day and banquet were a real high point for those who were able to attend (along with the Haiku North America conference the weekend before), there’s other tanka activity going on. John Barlow’s Snapshot Press, for example, is currently having a tanka book contest. It alternates every other year with a contest for haiku manuscripts, so do participate now so you don’t have to wait another two years for the next one. Cherie Hunter Day won the previous tanka book contest with her fine tanka collection, Early Indigo. And don’t forget the two other tanka contests that happen every fall—the Tanka Splendor Awards and the annual tanka contest sponsored by the Haiku Poets of Northern California. See announcements for these contests elsewhere in this issue. Your support of these contests ultimately helps promote tanka, so do make some submissions, and do keep in mind the 2004 TSA tanka contest coming up in April of 2004.

Fourth International Tanka Convention in Thailand

On November 16, 2003, in Bangkok, Thailand, the Japan Tanka Poets’ Club will hold its fourth international tanka convention. These conferences are held every three years, and it was my great honor to represent that Tanka Society of America at the 2000 conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia. Though I will not be able to attend this year’s conference (partly on account of my wife expecting our first baby on October 9), I offer the Japan Tanka Poets’ Club the best of wishes for a successful event.

TSA Officers for 2004

It’s that time of year again—time to start thinking about TSA officers for 2004. Most current officers are willing to continue for another year, but Pamela Miller Ness, who is now newsletter editor for the Haiku Society of America, would like to step down as TSA newsletter editor. If this is a job you feel qualified and willing to help with, please contact any officer to offer your support, or please propose possible names for officer consideration. And if there are other positions that you might be interested in, please don’t hesitate to offer your assistance. The next TSA Newsletter will contain a ballot for you to vote on new officers, so do watch for that. Help us offer a full slate of officers!

Tanka Publications

I recently received a copy of Reiko Nakagawa’s new tanka book, A Sprig of Thyme, translated by William E. Elliott. In an afterword, Tanka Journal editor Hatsue Kawamura describes how many of Nakagawa’s tanka are written about trips abroad but that “those written about her daily life . . . are more appealing.” Here is a sample (Nakagawa is herself a doctoral candidate, studying Emily Dickinson):

Female scholars

are showing photos

of their grandchildren

under the blossoms

of a weeping sage.

Another recent publication is the 2002 Tanka Society of America members’ tanka anthology, titled Castles in the Sand, which I edited and produced. The book was available at the TSA Tanka Day, and was also mailed to everyone who preordered copies. If you would like to order a copy, ordering information appears elsewhere in this newsletter. The book is gratefully dedicated to Sanford Goldstein, pioneer of American tanka. Here’s the book’s title poem, by Art Stein:

shore alchemy

changing bored children

into water sprites,

bored adults into

builders of fine castles

And speaking of TSA anthologies, Karina Young is currently working on the 2003 anthology. The deadline for submissions was August 30, but if you send in your submissions immediately, Karina is willing to accept poems until October 15. Please see complete information in “News & Notes.”

And still speaking of publications, I was delighted to see the new issue of Laura Maffei’s American Tanka this summer. Now an annual publication, it continues to be the leading journal for tanka in English, and this year’s issue also contains two fine essays that I highly recommend reading. Linda Jeannette Ward addresses the role of the real and the imagined in writing tanka, and Angela Leuck presents an essay about the poetry and poetics of Marianne Bluger. In this latter article, Leuck describes Bluger’s perspectives on tanka as requiring authentic feeling, originality, refined craft and art, lyricism and attention to sound and rhythm, and the expression of emotions, such as love or empathy, while avoiding ego. The writing of tanka, according to Bluger, is “a profound exercise in finding how to speak truly about one’s real life, of sending ‘little bulletins from the deep soul.’” Bluger is currently working on a new book of her tanka, titled Trout Evenings.

Newsletter Highlights

In addition to features I’ve already mentioned as appearing in this newsletter, you’ll also find a new review by Sanford Goldstein of Jane Reichhold’s A String of Flowers, Untied, perhaps serving as a response to Steven D. Carter’s review in our March issue. Also look for a “Favorite Tanka” selection by Merrill Ann Gonzales, a bountiful new installment of Michael McClintock’s “Tanka Café” column (this time about “things on a shelf”), and our usual lists of announcements, new publications, and more.

I’m very pleased with the breadth and depth of the content of the TSA Newsletter, and I’m grateful to everyone who helps to make the society what it is, chiefly through our newsletter. Thanks to all TSA members and officers who help keep the wheels turning. And again, an extra special thank you to those who attended and made presentations at the TSA Tanka Day, helping to make it more than just a day of tanka, but, I feel, a real turning point in English-language tanka development. It would be wonderful to make the Tanka Day an annual event, but if that might prove difficult, perhaps we could at least have another event right after the next Haiku North America conference, scheduled for October of 2005 at Port Townsend, Washington (near Seattle). It was a pleasure to meet many of you in New York, and I hope to see you in 2005, if not before!

—Michael Dylan Welch