A Haiku Alternative: How to Write Tanka Poetry
My partner suggested I write another haiku to overcome writer’s block and fulfill my WriteMarch commitment for the night. It was fun when I wrote a 17-syllable tribute to camelCase, but I wanted to push myself further. After too many searches for writing prompts and inspiration, I looked for “alternatives to haiku” and discovered Tanka.
According to Brett Christiansen, editor of House of Haiku, Tanka has the 31-syllable structure of 5–7–5–7–7, making it similar to a haiku with two extra lines. Tanka poems were written traditionally as one continuous line but modern English versions are typically formatted over five lines. They tend not to have punctuation.
A tanka poem is particularly fun because of the turn, or pivot, line in the middle, marking the transition from the idea of the first two lines to the reaction within the last two lines.
Armed with my newfound knowledge, this is my first tanka:
mind so uninspired
seeks loopholes to avoid work
finds haiku cousin
a short song makes someone smile
amidst pandemic panic
This post is part of my WriteMarch series, a commitment to write daily for a month.
