Carpe Diem Tanka Splendor #3 rain

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This whole month we will explore the beauty of tanka, that wonderful five-lined Japanese poetry form that derived from waka, through the "Ten Tanka Writing Techniques" by Teika. At the start of this month I shared his first Tanka Writing Technique "mystery and depth". In Tanka these are very important. In ancient times the tanka was used for mystery and depth of love between secret lovers. They hide their deeper feelings of love in their tanka and that makes tanka a beautiful poetry form and maybe for the purpose of hidden love even better than haiku. However ... in haiku you can also hide secrets of love. For example:

midsummer night -
the scent of Honeysuckle
tickles the senses

© Chèvrefeuille

scent of Honeysuckle
the smell of dew on her flowers
Holy incense

© Chèvrefeuille

Honeysuckle

Okay ... back to tanka and "mystery and depth" ... As I started this month I wasn't aware of the fact that I am not a great tanka poet, but I love to learn how to write tanka and I hope I can help to improve your tanka writing skills.

Today's prompt rain can be used perfectly with "mystery and depth" and that I hope to show in the tanka I wrote inspired on this episode:

ah! that summer rain
the perfume of the moist soil
tickles my senses
I lay down, naked, in her arms
surrounded by Honeysuckle

© Chèvrefeuille Well ... I hope I have inspired you to create tanka with depth and mystery hidden in it.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 7th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our next episode, Teika's second Tanka Writing Technique, later on. For now .... have fun!

Carpe Diem Universal Jane #5 autumn scenes

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Last month (October) I started with "Universal Jane" a special feature in honor and tribute of Jane Reichhold who passed away last July. Jane was a very important "key" for Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and she was one of our co-hosts. She will be remembered forever ... here at CDHK ... her spirit is dwelling here and I love that.

So this special feature is for honoring her and to let her inspire you through her haiku and tanka. This week I have a few "autumn" haiku for your inspiration:

October beach
in all the footprints
the tread of shoes

maple hills
stain the evening sky
autumn

autumn river
covering my feet wet
with golden leaves

autumn's dusk
the smell of burning leaves
brings tears to my eyes

© Jane Reichhold

I love these haiku they all give me a real feeling of autumn the season of falling leaves, decay, Halloween and letting go. Autumn is my favorite season. Nature shows her most wonderful colors and as winter is nearing the wonderful structures of bare branches are awesome.

raking the garden the sweet scent of rotting leaves arouses my senses

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 7th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem Tanka Splendor #2 Mist

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We have started with our adventure ... exploring the beauty of Tanka through the "Ten Tanka Writing Techniques" by Teika. Yesterday I shared his first Tanka Writing technique "Mystery and Depth" and today I love to challenge you to create a tanka inspired on Mist by using this first Tanka Writing Technique.

A few days ago it was Halloween, so I thought maybe I have to try to catch this "mystery and depth" in a tanka themed Halloween ... sounds great doesn't it? So here is my response on this prompt mist with the following tanka:

stories told
white witches dancing on the heath
just tendrils of mist
scaring little children
"the boogie-man comes!"

© Chèvrefeuille

White Bitches (In Dutch: Witte Wieven) this is how we call this kind of mist on the heath

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 7th at noon (CET). I will try to post our next episode, rain, later on. For now ... have fun!

Delayed posts

Dear Haijin,

I hadn't time to write / publish our regular prompt and 'Universal Jane' episodes. I will publish them later today.

Namaste,

Chèvrefeuille

Carpe Diem Special Japanese Poetry In The Lowlands #1 Jeanine Hoedemakers'

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I have decided to bring this month a few Dutch haiku poets, my colleagues so to say, and as I am preparing this first episode of "Carpe Diem Special Japanese Poetry In The Lowlands" I realize that I have taken up a real challenge. I have to translate the haiku of my fellow Dutchmen into English I of course will do that I only hope I do honor their work with my translation(s).

This first episode is about Jeanine Hoedemakers, a gifted haiku poetess, who has already published a few haiku books. I got to know her through the Haiku Kring Nederland (the Dutch Haiku Circle) several years ago. I was just a starting haiku poet and loved to make my haiku better. So I decided to become a member of the Dutch Haiku Circle. Jeanine then was coordinating the so called "chain letter" of the Dutch Haiku Circle. A group of haiku poets who shared their haiku with each other through a letter. I am still a member of that chain letter and I love it. It's a chance to read the work of others and comment on it to improve the haiku (or tanka) shared.

Jeanine is a long time member of the Dutch Haiku Circle and she always enjoys reading work of others and share her own work. She is a very active member of the Dutch Haiku Circle for sure more active as I am.

Jeanine Hoedemakers

Next to being a great poet, shae also is a very gifted photographer and painter. In this episode of "Japanese Poetry In The Lowlands" I love to share a haiga and a tanka to inspire you.

nu de rozenstruik
te groot werd voor de pot
moet hij de grond in
we moeten goed onthouden
zegt hij, hoe klein het begint

the rosebush
too big for the pot
should be earthed
we must remember
he says, how small it starts

© Jeanine Hoedemakers (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)

And here is a beautiful haiga she created:

haiga Pair of Snails (photo and haiku © Jeanine Hoedemakers)

hij geeft haar een zoen nog een, bedelt ze lachend,

in slowmotion © Jeanine Hoedemakers he gives her a kiss another one, she begs with a smile, in slowmotion © Jeanine Hoedmakers (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)

Of course there are a lot more beauties by Jeanine Hoedemakers, but that's maybe for another month. You can visit her (Dutch) website by clicking on the above given link.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 6th at noon (CET).

Have fun!

Carpe Diem Tanka Splendor #1 Teika's first of Ten Tanka Writing Techniques "Mystery and Depth"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the first episode of our Carpe Diem Haiku Kai month, November 2016, in which we will look at the "Ten Tanka Writing Techniques" by Teika and will celebrate the Splendor of Tanka. I hope this month will help us to improve our Tanka Writing skills.
By the way, every episode about one of the Tanka Writing Techniques has a prompt to, maybe you can use that prompt in your response, but that's not an obligation. Feel free to use the prompt. For this first Tanka Writing Technique I have chosen colored leaves

According to tanka tradition Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241) is said to have been written a letter in 1219 to an unnamed student in which he mentions the ten tanka styles or techniques.
It was a common practice for students of poetry to write sets of ten tanka on ten sets of subjects as practice and challenge. It was a good plan. The various topics, such as snow, fog, blossoms, moon, grief, or travel, allowed the poet to explore and practice with subjects and situations not immediate or emotionally loaded. These poems were then copied and sent off, with a sum of money, to the local tanka expert for correction and appraisement.
Sometimes the poems were returned with only marks of circles or lines in the margins indicating the teacher's opinion, but occasionally the expert was sufficiently interested in the student or his work (the majority were male) to write up comments or expound more on current theories.
Robert H. Bower, who did so much great work with Earl Miner for Japanese poetry, translated in the winter, 1985, in Monumenta Nipponica the teaching letter now known as Maigetsushō, along with copious notes of explanation. Bower's translation is well worth deeper study because the Japanese author, Fujiwara Teika, was the most revered tanka teacher of his time and for centuries afterwards his opinions were read and adopted with a religious fervor.

Fujiwara no Teika

As one of the compilers of the Shinkokinshū (1204) - the eighth and considered the greatest of the imperial anthologies of Japanese poetry - Teika had 46 of his poems included which was a great honour as he was among the younger and more innovative poets of his day. So esteemed were Teika's opinions that after his death, sons and their mothers started a fight over their rights to various documents that is evident today in the schools of tanka named for the family lines - Nijo and Reizei.
The result is that today there are several versions, with and without forgeries, of the Maigetsushō - Monthly Notes. But for scholars it is worth wading through them all because this document is considered the most extensive and comprehensive of Teika's surviving critical writings. There is a great deal of information to be gleaned from this letter that could be valuable for tanka writers at any age, even today. Any serious student of the form would do well to explore it.
However, my attention was caught by Teika's mention of the ten tanka styles or techniques. He does not elaborate on all of them in this document because as he states, he had already discussed them in previous lessons. For us, the mere listing of the ten styles or techniques is one of the reasons this treatise is so famous. In Robert Bower's way of exploring every facet of any work, he includes a footnote that the idea of ten tanka styles had been given in an essay supposedly written by Mibu no Tadamine in the early 900s titled as Tadamine Jittei - Tadamine's Ten Styles. However, none of these styles bear the same name as Teika's, yet similarities are clear in several cases.

1. Mystery and depth - yūgentei, the image evoking ineffable loneliness

This category is associated mostly with Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204) Teika's renowned father and tanka expert. Teika mentions this in some of his other teachings and uses as examples poem #3:254 Kin'yōshū by Toshiyori:

uzura naku / mano no irie no / hamakaze ni / obananami yoru / aki no yūgure

cries of quail
from the shore of Mano cove
winds blow
waves of plume grass
ripple in autumn dusk

#5:533 Shinkokinshū:

furusato wa / chiru momijiba ni / uzumorete /noki no shinobu ni / akikaze zo fuku

my birthplace
buried under crimson leaves
fallen in the garden
sedge grass from the eaves
melancholy autumn wind

These Tanka are really beautiful, but at that time, these were first mentioned "waka", as we have seen earlier here at CDHK.

With this Tanka Writing Technique, Mystery and Depth, we see already the "link" between haiku and tanka. Both poetry forms are mostly associated to nature and with a deeper meaning. In this Tanka Writing Technique we have to try to bring mystery and depth (spiritual layer) into our tanka. So that's our goal for today's episode.

Credits: Kuuya-taka Waterfall, Kyoto, Japan

Here is my attempt to create a Tanka with this technique Mystery and Depth:

hidden waterfall the sound of falling water resonates against the rough mountain in a distance a temple bell moves with the sound of water

© Chèvrefeuille

Awesome to create tanka with this technique, but it certainly wasn't easy, maybe that's because I am not that kind of Tanka poet like Teika or his father. However I like this form and this month will be a challenge not only for you, my dear Haijin, but also for me.

This first Tanka Splendor episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 5th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our next episode, mist, later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem Special (2nd guest) Kala Ramesh's 5th "with all the stars"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This is our last episode of our festive 4th anniversary month October 2016. With this last episode we enter the first month towards our 5th anniversary next year. Five years of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai ... awesome. I hope to create a smashing anniversary month next year because that will be our first lustrum (a period of five years), so I am already starting with the preparations of that lustrum month, October 2017.

Today it's not only our last episode of this month, but also the last Carpe Diem Special by Kala Ramesh, an Indian haiku poetess, who is renown all over the globe and who also was befriended with Jane Reichhold. Kala has written gorgeous haiku and tanka so for this last CD Special about her work I have tried to find a few beauties, haiku and tanka.

Kala Ramesh

thunderclap
the darkening sky splits
into liquid night

temple bells
the isolated raindrops
on my umbrella

spring breeze —
I catch the tune
she leaves behind *

* With this haiku Kala Ramesh won the Heron's Nest Award Summer 2006

Blossoms of the Cordia Sebestena, a beautiful tree found in India

seeing the whole

blossom contained
in a seed
I look up to the sky
with all the stars

illusions ride
on a fast fading rainbow
somewhere there
I let go of my childhood...
I must have

© Kala Ramesh

It was really a joy to have Kala Ramesh as our guest here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. She has written wonderful haiku and tanka and I am glad that she could inspire us through her haiku and tanka.

orange chrysanthemums decorating the backyard of the old mansion

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 4th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new and first episode of our "Tanka Splendor" month later on. In that first episode we will discover the first Tanka Writing Technique by Teika Mystery and Depth.