ATLAS POETICA A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka

Number 17 Spring, 2014

M. Kei, editor Amora Johnson, technical director Yancy Carpentier, editorial assistant

2014 Keibooks, Perryville, Maryland, USA KEIBOOKS P O Box 516 Perryville, Maryland, USA 21903 AtlasPoetica.org [email protected]

Atlas Poetica A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka

Copyright © 2014 by Keibooks

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers and scholars who may quote brief passages. See our EDUCATIONAL USE NOTICE.

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka, a triannual print and e-journal, is dedicated to publishing and promoting fine poetry of place in modern English tanka (including variant forms). Atlas Poetica is interested in both traditional and innovative verse of high quality and in all serious attempts to assimilate the best of the Japanese waka/tanka/kyoka/gogyoshi genres into a continuously developing English short verse tradition. In addition to verse, Atlas Poetica publishes articles, essays, reviews, interviews, letters to the editor, etc., related to tanka poetry of place. Tanka in translation from around the world are welcome in the journal.

ISBN 978-0615913575 (Print) TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Saturday Night on Prince of Wales Road, Joy Educational Use Notice ...... 4 McCall ...... 23 Urban Tanka, M. Kei ...... 5 A Rose Design / Skica ruže, Kathabela Wilson ...... 24 Tanka in Sets and Sequences Blessed Be, Johannes S. H. Bjerg ...... 26 First Beledi, Deborah Kolodji & Genie Nouvelle Orleans, Beau Boudroux ...... 26 Nakano ...... 7 La Cavaliere de Minuit / Midnight Ride / Jinete de Individual Tanka ...... 27 la media noche, Genie Nakano ...... 8 ageing : a tight tanka string, Sanford Goldstein 9 Articles Through Delauney’s Windows, Alhama Du tanka traduit, écrit, publié en français: survol Garcia ...... 10 1871-2013, Janick Belleau ...... 66 Futility 2.0, Grunge ...... 11 Tanka in French: Translated, Written and Published: Drying Dishes with Mom, Joan-Dianne 1871–2013, An Overview, Smith ...... 11 Janick Belleau ...... 77 By the Railroad Tracks, Sergio Ortiz ...... 12 Review: Journeys Near and Far : tanka roads, by coup de grâce, Sergio Ortiz ...... 12 Sanford Goldstein, Reviewed refugees, Sergio Ortiz ...... 13 by M. Kei ...... 88 Becoming Visible, Sergio Ortiz ...... 13 Review: Treewhispers : Tanka by Giselle Maya, Things I Should Have Learnt By Now, Violette Reviewed by Patricia Prime ...... 89 Rose-Jones ...... 13 Review: Een keuze uit—A Selection from Atlas Not in Your Name, Sonam Chhoki ...... 14 Poetica, Reviewed by Patricia Prime .....90 Rail Trail, Andrea J. Hargrove ...... 14 Review: Urban Tumbleweed, Notes from a Tanka A True Story, Grunge ...... 14 Diary, by Harryette Mullen, Reviewed by Breakfast crumbs, Terri L. French...... 15 M. Kei ...... 92 Gathering, Marilyn Humbert ...... 15 The Opening, Gerry Jacobson ...... 16 Announcements ...... 95 The Red Baron, M. Kei ...... 17 Circular Tanka, Brendan Slater ...... 17 Biographies ...... 97 Hometown, Kath Abela Wilson & Brian Zimmer ...... 18 a home without walls, Seánan Forbes ...... 19 Corridors, Matsukaze ...... 20 Dark Orrin, Matsukaze ...... 20 Finding Myself: Who Am I?, Matsukaze ...... 21 sanctuary, Joy McCall ...... 22 martyrs, Joy McCall ...... 22 Black and Blue, Joy McCall ...... 23 Educational Use Notice

Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland, USA, publisher of the journal, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka, is dedicated to tanka education in schools and colleges, at every level. It is our intention and our policy to facilitate the use of Atlas Poetica and related materials to the maximum extent feasible by educators at every level of school and university studies. Educators, without individually seeking permission from the publisher, may use Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka’s online digital editions and print editions as primary or ancillary teaching resources. Copyright law “Fair Use” guidelines and doctrine should be interpreted very liberally with respect to Atlas Poetica precisely on the basis of our explicitly stated intention herein. This statement may be cited as an effective permission to use Atlas Poetica as a text or resource for studies. Proper attribution of any excerpt to Atlas Poetica is required. This statement applies equally to digital resources and print copies of the journal. Individual copyrights of poets, authors, artists, etc., published in Atlas Poetica are their own property and are not meant to be compromised in any way by the journal’s liberal policy on “Fair Use.” Any educator seeking clarification of our policy for a particular use may email the Editor of Atlas Poetica at [email protected]. We welcome innovative uses of our resources for tanka education.

Atlas Poetica Keibooks P O Box 516 Perryville, MD 21903 Urban Tanka

You hold in your hands the new, expanded poetry is the music of words, and mathematics is Atlas Poetica. When founded, ATPO was 72 pages, the language of music. then grew to 84 pages without a price increase, Also featured in this issue are two young and now, as it begins its sixth year, has grown to poets: Grunge, a gay Indo-American tanka poet, 104 pages. The growth is made possible by the and Matsukaze, an African American tanka poet. ever increasing contributions of tanka, kyoka, Both are intensely modern in their approach, yet gogyoshi, tanka prose, tanka sequences, shaped steeped in the aesthetics of tanka. Grunge gives a tanka, articles, book reviews, and announcements bug’s level view of life in America for the bottom from around the world. This in turn requires a 1%, exploring themes of violence, poverty, price increase, the first ever since we were racism, homophobia, ableism, abuse, and more. founded. Matsukaze depicts everything from the life of I had been considering increasing the size of working class African Americans to tanka poets the journal for some time, but when I received of the Japanese court with equal facility. His the overwhelming response to our urban tanka portraits of human beings are highly realistic, yet special feature, The Garage, Not the Garden : colored with a lyricism bordering on the surreal. Tanka of Urban Life, it was clear that now was Also in this issue are Liz Moura and Richard the time to do it. The many original tanka St. Clair. The former presents us with the submitted to the special feature demonstrated the romance and realism of a Lesbian partnership, power of the topic. This issue was largely filled and the latter with the sorrow of an older man with submissions that were originally sent for the facing the loss of many things. Brendan Slater special feature, but also by some poets new to presents a tanka shaped as a circle, while Toki, Atlas Poetica. For example, Alhama Garcia, a new to these pages, also offers a shaped tanka. French tanka poet whose ‘Through Delauney’s These are just a few of the immense possibilities Windows’ was a delightful surprise. His urban offered by the fecundity of tanka. and urbane tanka prose was part of the With the new expanded size, Atlas Poetica can inspiration to focus on both French tanka and publish many more poets from around the world, urban tanka for the issue. as well as in-depth articles, book reviews, and Janick Belleau contributes an article about announcements. The geographic reach of the French tanka in both French and English, issue is immense—Israel, Ireland, Canada, translated by Maxianne Berger. She traces the Bhutan, New Zealand, Ethiopia, France, the history of tanka translated, written, and United States, and more—and demonstrates why published in French in France and Canada from poetry of place has a special power for poets the 19th century to the present day, as well as around the world. apprising us of new venues, such as Lyon Meeting for Japanese Tanka Poetry in Lyon, ~K~ France, and the forthcoming Francophone web journal, Cirrus. M. Kei The urban theme resonated with many tanka Editor, Atlas Poetica poets, both new and well-known. A number of our tanka poets are very well traveled, such as Lake Powell, Arizona-Utah, USA. Kath Abela Wilson, who provides us with tanka snapshots of various cities around the world, and Cover Image courtesy of Earth Observatory, NASA. also a mathematical tanka sequence translated mathematics is thought inimical to poetry, but

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 5 Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 6 First Beledi*

Deborah Kolodji & Genie Nakano

my snake arms artificial dowery wooden as a marionette wrapped she teaches me around her waist to find my deep inside center the start of something real

warming a woman’s to the arabic rhythms ancient call so long ago churning the earth almost forgotten conception to birth I step into a groove circle of mid-wives a singer moans as morning glories to the zither start to bloom crescendo of hips I roll up my shirt and my and bare the scar uncooperative belly of a c-section

jeweled in trance ruby belly ring I don’t want to stop pulls in, pulls out rising above a rhythmic my clicking hip core massage I balance in Nataraj*

~California, USA red hibiscus in her garden two dogs bored *beledi: First rhythm learned in Middle Eastern Dance. with my dance movements *doumbek: Egyptian drum.

*nataraj: Dancing Shiva. Indian god of dance. turn up the music the doumbek* player strikes a riff beledi shimmies the golden coins

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 7 Midnight Ride / La Cavalière de Minuit

Genie Nakano

Josette Frankel, English-French Translator / Traductrice Anglais-Français

je sais que tu me vois I know you see me debout devant ta fenêtre standing outside your window sur ma bicyclette fusée bleue with my blue rocket bike avec mes bas blancs dentelle, wearing lacy white stockings talons aiguilles et rien d’autre spiked heels and nothing else

you know me tu me connais and I know you et moi, je te connais just two people in the dark nous deux seuls dans le noir so let’s squeeze the lightness alors, tordons toute lumière out of this darkness de ce noir

don’t be afraid n’aie pas peur I’m smooth as velvet je suis douce comme du velours on the open sur la grande route . . . highway . . . jamais les freins rarely use the brakes

come out, viens, come out viens take that prends midnight ride with me cette course de minuit avec moi no one will see us personne ne nous verra ~California, USA ~California, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 8 Jinete de la media noche ageing : a tight tanka string

Genie Nakano Sanford Goldstein

Flor de te, English-Spanish Translator / Traductora Inglés-Español people keep telling me wonderful, wonderful about my nearing eighty-eight, I find no wonder in it at all, sé que me ves my life is filled with empty parada afuera de tu ventana con mi azul motocicleta vestida con medias de encajes blancos find myself tacones con clavos y más nada climbing higher and higher on this rocky cliff, shall I finally make the jump? me conoces shall I wave goodbye to air? te conosco solo dos personas en la oscuridad exprimamos la claridad the Norwich woman afuera de estas tinieblas tells me again and again to leave, leave the chaos of Japan, come to her historic place of wonder no tengas miedo soy tan suave como el terciopelo en el autopista the small libre careful atomic energy plants nunca uses los frenos being built in the States, will the sand on their grounds stop a future water fall? ¡ven! ¡ven! toma ese I want paseo de la media noche conmigo some closure for endings, nadie nos verá I want out and out and still old age goes on ~California, USA

the ancient Norwich mother lingers on, she says she wants God, she says she does not want to leave

~Japan

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 9 Through Delauney’s Windows

Alhama Garcia

From that service room in the maiden floor, crossing the Pont Neuf bridge sixth and no elevator, between two books to read lately I was wondering from the Sorbonne library, I used to watch the why was that man cars turning around under the winter rain and over the river leaning the melting snow and a dim light, all French cars what was written on the water? of course, the light 2-HP, some black Tractions from the oldies, a lot of Dauphines and fragile Oh I remember well the old theaters with Simcas and unexpendable Versailles and even their red false velvet chairs and Macist and some noisy Panhard and most of all the beautiful Ulysses and Hercules stories and Italian westerns Patrick Jane’s DS with their smart lines, all of and so many hours of despair and boredom them turning and whispering behind the dark spent with hundreds of people aside, so many window panes, and the green buses with their blurred dreams and cruel laughs: all in all, a double bell ring and the soft-caped ticket lousy destroying time factory. But so necessary to collector standing easy at the rear platform, keep us asleep. I know, in remote times, for I’ve been walking a red roof line there in a high slumber, a river was running scratched and torn apart down from there to the Seine, and Saint Médard by this north wind church and its cemetery dug on the nearly since my teens I hate meadows were certainly quiet and silent. I can this headache cleanout easily dream of, closing my eyes very firmly, just a short jump to a dreamed Eleventh. Havoc of I’ve been dreaming so long of that sixth floor times and money. How disappointed when room. Why, I just can’t figure it out. Not of the turning back to Toulon, my favorite theater had same room, not that room, in the same building, turned into a bank—a bank! Forsaken Queen of and with different people, but I knew it was all Lydia’s sad ghost must be still roaming and the same in many ways. Then the melting snow crying somewhere. turned dirty under the black tires and cars keep turning on their invisible rail threads towards la and still through Seine or Glacière subway station on Nestor the Delauney Windows Burma side or avenue des Gobelins; they couldn’t i keep watching escape, just slip to the getaway to Jeanne d’Arc, a sign a shadow a sun to the east side, into the silence of the night while reflection: is there any life shining? tires screamed sadly, with disappearing lives hidden in the run itself behind the car closed From here where I stand now red tiles keep panes. clicking under the coldest wind of the year. Then I remember, in my real reality, I turned Protected may be by the town roofline, but I can back to the narrow bed and lay by her warm side. feel it freeeezing my spine down as real ice creeping to the heart through the suddenly painful chest. The roof ridge is high and sharp. That buster skipping on it, that I can see through these windows, is that me?

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 10 i don’t fear any armoured arachnid sting Drying Dishes with Mom for its self-defense but the conceited angel Joan-Dianne Smith pulling me to the hidden pit

Then, slowly, I let my breath come back by back in grade seven itself. What else can I do? I drag it back. With a intrigued with afternoon off loud and noisy heartbeat, all the stuff inside doing easy things seems to start anew. Nice old engine. Keep on sewing blue topstitched apron walking, come on— learning Canada’s Food Guide

would you watch again from that sixth floor window Mrs. Sigurdsson new cars turning round pitched a career idea but the girl now must be gone why not I told Mom ―is there still a roof on top? thrilled she counted this a promise one I could not ever break ~Paris, France

drying dishes with Mom on my seventeenth birthday I broached changing plans study arts instead of home ec how dare I reconsider

anthropology cool people called it anthro Futility 2.0 or psychology or English lit or Can lit Grunge I imagined those ideas

a robot’s now crumbled in shame eternal struggle I’d pushed Mom over the edge to reduce selfish disloyal human emotion she’d counted on this life plan into 1s and 0s she cried and I recommitted

a human’s ~Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada eternal struggle to reduce his motives into good and bad

~Florida, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 11 By the Railroad Tracks coup de grâce

Sergio Ortiz Sergio Ortiz that I met him in a bar what is a day and we went home together but this unique way of breathing to remember saturated the texture of leaves with the texture through the moonlight of discarded skin that I saw him again bursting when sparrows fell into tomorrow, in the dark of night I turned we memorized all rage to rags . . . the hum of cicadas a subtle skin that I missed him, I took my skin his ocean and its foam to bed with him against the sky and it became that there were sparks his bed . . . in every corner of the room behind my eyes hidden from the light that the rain was driven, let us live driven into the ground near each other . . . beside the broken barn secretly by the railroad tracks between the shadows next to the sea and the soul

~Puerto Rico, USA ~Puerto Rico, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 12 refugees Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Sergio Ortiz Violette Rose-Jones these stories we never tell, words we never utter . . . In the pioneering days of the Bellinger reading a nod, a sound Valley, a working dog that learned to enjoy the we cannot hear taste of eggs often met a short and brutal end at the hands of his owner. Eggs were very valuable faith abides but so was a working dog, the creature able to in the cycle of the moon, replace two men in the round up. A way to the heft in raising discourage them from the unfortunate habit was a body by the arms, found. Local farmers took to blowing eggs and the sorrow of old age refilling them with a mixture made of the Cunjevoi plant (Alocasia brisbanensis). The dogs to sit would steal the eggs and eat them. The mixture like a mute parrot, would cause them intense burning pain, swelling and stand and numbness in their mouths. Most developed like a diseased tree . . . an aversion to eggs for life. A few died but it was patience grows dim in the heart either this or shoot them. ~Puerto Rico, USA exhausted I hide amongst the cunjevoi eating the red berries till I sicken for you I can never be enough

Becoming Visible ~Australia

Sergio Ortiz

A touch of a jay about him, my husband— flying in and out of our bedroom. Always giving parties to cover the silence. Always a leaf quivering in the rush of air. What could I give him, but the threat of my extinction?

go home slow-healing wounds like fog floating over the city, let me come apart in the wind

~Puerto Rico, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 13 Not in your name Rail Trail

Sonam Chhoki Andrea J. Hargrove

graffiti lines scrawl late night— across the crumbling stone walls the gate glistens tulip white once erect buildings, without a creak proud of the valley and their no, I’m not keeping role in the community; a watch for you defunct railway lines dead and severed on the ground your wreath hangs withered thick grass grows over in the persimmon grove rotting ties and rusting rails not even crow fledglings interspersed with flowr’ing weeds; in their faltering flight give it a second look power lines murmur over the heads of hikers they run between poles, the sun traverses watching everything below a boneless blue sky as it changes through the years to its summer peak orange blooms bend with scent ~Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, USA I am not waiting anymore

I will fill this speckled blue goblet with the swelling moon and drink it but not in your name A True Story ~Bhutan Grunge

Once upon a time in Florida, this kid who looked like Mowgli from the Jungle Book cartoon went into an alligator pit and sat on one. He was ten.

he is twenty-eight has all fingers and toes

~Florida, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 14 Breakfast crumbs Gathering

Terri L. French Marilyn Humbert he asks Grey light filters through gums as outback sun has it been falls behind the Macdonnell Ranges. seven years And they emerge from twilight in twos and the sound of a butter knife threes, gathering wood, making their way to the scraping toast meeting place. They sit crossed legged around fires in ever swelling groups among giant river gums, in the for each time dry white sand bed. he looks at his watch flocking together fresh strawberries in twos, and threes stabbed with a fork at dusk cockatoos return home to roost all out of artificial sweetener I hear distant voices, a language I don’t perhaps just once understand. real sugar Sometimes laughter, sometimes anger, will do shattering glass, fighting. Flickering flames toss shadows, caught in moonbeams and starlight. a little chicory in her coffee no more to roam but what to cut plains and savannah the bitterness caged by of perfunctory kisses wire fences and settlers laws runny eggs ~Todd River, Alice Springs, NT, Australia scraped into the disposal she knows that its broken by the monotonous hum

~Alabama, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 15 The Opening

Gerry Jacobson

I walk up the steps of Old Parliament House Theresienstadt was only a holding camp for the into the brightly lit hall. A waiter offers white death trains. A camp for “privileged Jews” like wine, canapés. The hall seems full of light army veterans, their murder postponed for a few chatter, politicians, diplomats in suits. The months. Theresienstadt Exhibition. I had asked for a ticket to the Opening, invited myself. We have an old photo of him, Louis H wearing his pickelhaube, in a Prussian artillery I clutch my glass, glance at some exhibits on regiment. We have an army postcard sent to his the side wall. I shiver! In this place I don’t need to wife, postmarked Osterod, East Prussia, 1914. circulate and make polite conversation. I belong Was he in the battle of Tannenburg that opened here. It’s my concentration camp. It’s in my the Great War? genes. It’s where he died. What else is left of him? sounds of traffic fading A letter to my father dated 1937, welcoming into night him to the family: “Lieber Schwiegersohn . . . !” beat of my heart “Dear Son-in-Law . . . !” dance of my breath A Red Cross postcard from behind enemy I think of him . . . August 1942. He was 69, lines, dated June 1940: “Lieber Kinder . . . !” “Dear arrested by the Gestapo, taken away from his Children, we are well!” home, transported by cattle train to the old barracks of Theresienstadt (Terezin). Crammed Oh! And in my genes a tendency to baldness. in with thousands of others. And dying four months later. Dying of cold, of malnutrition, of it’s dark inside . . . typhus. Dying of a broken heart. Dying in her rhythmic breath January, 1943, the grandfather I never knew. and heart beat . . . Caught in that dark vortex of history, dragged those songs unborn down, sucked under. and overwhelming

surrounded . . . ~Canberra, Australia; Terezin, Czech Republic concave darkness presses in . . . clawed hands reach out wide eyes dribble tears

Later I meet a survivor. He tells me it was worse for the (German) army veterans, who often came into the camp wearing their medals. The beloved homeland that they had fought for, now incarcerated them. And little did they know that

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 16 The Red Baron

M. Kei

Manfred von Richthofen, “The Red ghosts of the dead: Baron” (Le Diable Rouge, Der Rote Kampfflieger), was Manfred von Richthofen born 2 May 1892 and died in combat 21 April saying goodbye, 1918. He is the world’s most famous flying ace, just goodbye, earning 80 victories during WWI to become a to some other pilots legend. Even formal portraits show him with what WWII soldiers dubbed “the thousand yard stare,” now generally accepted as a sign of Post in an ancient film, Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was the Manfred von Richthofen policy of the German military to “fly until you says goodbye die.” Not that it mattered much; the life to his father and expectancy of a WWI fighter pilot was 28 days. flies away to his fate Even as Germany lionized him, Richthofen knew he would die. the Jasta pilots joking and pranking with their dogs, the thin strap of the bandage under the Red Baron’s chin his eyes know he is mortal, Circular Tanka the famous Red Baron petting his dog, Brendan Slater the black bandage under his chin a silent film fitting for the silence in the Red Baron’s eyes he will fly until he becomes another man’s trophy later they called it the “thousand yard stare” but the Red Baron already has it in all his photographs

~Germany, WWI ~The Hayes, Stone, Staffs, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 17 Hometown

Kath Abela Wilson & Brian Zimmer old times place God Alone meet me there I said above the door he called out of the blue once home what else could I say recalling Trappist signs: to be sure Enclosure, Do Not Enter

always here mother’s rush holding in dream my sister’s cut-off thumb two youths entwined stuck in a spinning wheel rising like bread symbol of the next break steamy and sweet home like an empty church his kiss a poem her house built pressed me against the wall of cake and candy my first love grandma knew I count the ways a child’s need for you were like my dad beauty and the grim

“what happens upstairs a hideaway in this house stays my mother’s mother in this house” “she’ll outlive me” with his own fists my dad was right the boy beats his body but not that way a father’s tongue you hear it has an address before you reach it tenderness and strength the pine forest a poet whispers in the glen and a lover everyone’s secret place

words— inside the tree you showed me we are together a door our words both surprised to find carved on the inside the key in my pocket tell the future a silver dollar tight spins toward me this silence a 5th grade catch the bud prize essay on why dare not open I’d enter a convent and flower

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 18 agave blooms slow rain my spreading rosette feeds the sea thank goodness all around us my adventitious shoots the moon defy a one life stand swells the tide

rising sun ~New Haven, Connecticut, USA in the window of this room you wake me each day behind luffing sails no matter where I am the sunset we forget to watch ~Staten Island, New York / Kettering, Ohio, USA our homeland slip away

~Boston, Massachusetts, USA

after three moons crossing water the strangeness of land all of a piece swaying our feet

~Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA a home without walls waterfront pub Seánan Forbes we buy drinks with stories found at sea a home over dinner at home that has no walls we wordlessly share distant dreams ~Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA the horizon pulls away a pod of whales ~New York City, New York, USA the only family behind us our passage landlocked vanishes our dreams don watery habits ~London, UK we adjust our alarm clocks to match the tide

~Mystic, Connecticut, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 19 Corridors Dark Orrin

Matsukaze Matsukaze moving quickly, quietly 6:17 am down train depot corridors is it wrong that cast in the glow i see myself in Konoshima’s waka, of lights, red lights; nothing that i see myself documenting but red lights the earthiness of this life? lone woman the ties that bind her weary, tired self ancient and three-strand braided— moving down these we who are now corridors, cold; write to keep in touch tightening her coat around her with our progenitors daughter of the night this year the scent of i am renewed countless men moving down the hotel hallway staining this skin still your unaloud pores houses hopes of the ancients face bruised, face full this morning of premature age lines arranging chairs around tables the click of unsure in the dining area stilettos i wonder what it would be like down the train depot’s hallway to be a Meiji man a long rain we are Adam— a bleak evening dirt and breath inky dark, swallowing mixed and someone’s bruised kid— now we populate this a girl-cum-woman too soon earth

~Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA ~Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 20 Finding Myself : Who am I?

Matsukaze

and the tanka mistress *Akiko Yosano was the pen-name of a Japanese author, reads my blood flow poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist, and social/tanka she sees traces of *Akiko reformer, active in the late Meiji period as well as the sleeping in these cells— Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. Her name and still someone more ancient at birth was Shō Hō.

*Princess Shikishi was a Japanese classical waka poet, male poet i am who lived during the late Heian and early Kamakura however periods. She was the third daughter of Emperor Go- i find myself identifying Shirakawa. In 1159, Shikishi, who did not marry, with female poets . . . went into service at the Kamo Shrine as Priestess in am i passionate *Princess Shikishi? Kyoto.

*Lady Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet in the lobby and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the staring out of the floor length Heian period. She is best known as the author of The windows . . . Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 in the pre-dawn darkness and 1012. is that *Lady Murasaki in my face? *Ono no Komachi was a Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early somewhere around 3am Heian period. She was renowned for her unusual while moving with vigor beauty, and Komachi is today a synonym for feminine i wondered if beauty in Japan. my thoughts might be hiding *Ono no Komachi’s laughter *Lady Izumi Shikibu was a mid Heian period Japanese waka poet. She is a member of the Thirty-six Medieval Poetry Immortals. She was the contemporary how could i forget her of Murasaki Shikibu and Akazome Emon at the court unfortunately ‘my very eyes feel amorous’ of empress Joto Mon’in. is something i can agree with for a moment, a pause in breathing *Lady Izumi Shikibu looks at me

~Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 21 sanctuary martyrs

Joy McCall Joy McCall dusty shed noisy the holy of holies the great factory back then sprawls safe hiding place from the river’s edge dark corners to the railway sidings on tiptoes the machines through the crack throw off engine oil I’d see the man and cutting swarf thin stick in hand exhaustion and despair beating time dirt and disease it was years generations before I grew of Norfolk men too tall to hide lose fingers and he took me by the hair and hands and hope into the old house martyrs to the machine and dawn came still they come and long dawns after as their fathers did and I watched till they are old from the high window fighting with the steel a bird, nesting on the shed they lose, they die and oh and far away I wanted to be small then in the colonies and brown-winged in the oceans and silently safe again where their engines turn and holy no one knows their names, no one cares

~Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK ~Engine Factory, Suffolk, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 22 Black and Blue Saturday Night on Prince of Wales Road Joy McCall Joy McCall I wake hooked to machines the girl I can’t move looked up from the gutter there is a dead boy and took his hand in the next bed, staring they found her at dawn torn in the alley by my bed through the night a dark muslim the cathedral bells with closed eyes strike the hour he is there every night in its dark shadow praying aloud clubbers drink around the clock

one long street my body named for the old Prince is dark blue and there are from rural Wales bones visible crawls now with misery I spend days watching twenty-four hour drinking blue turn to yellow white powder in all the washrooms lights day and night on this strip I know the evening the dealer makes a fortune by voices— on desolation road my man, my child and the muslim nurse Saturday night was a success if they got metal rods arrested, drunk, beaten up like blades of grass spiking screwed against the wall from my legs— I am in some alien field the dealer with poppies and bones collects on Saturday night making rounds ~Intensive Care Unit, Norwich, England, 2002 at Sunday Mass, a thick wad in the collection plate

~Norwich, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 23 A Rose Design / Skica ruže

Kath Abela Wilson

Tomáš Madaras, English-Slovakian Translator / prekladateľ z angličtiny

Listening to a mathematical lecture at a conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, in honor of mathematician Alex outside a rose window Rosa, a poet takes the mathematical terms out into the rose rose clouds and a garden garden. wait expectantly for an old and well lexicon of roses neglected subject inductively unfolding za ružicovým oknom superimposed oblaky ruží a záhrada in their colorings v nádeji očakáva starú a hojne Slovník ruží zanedbávanú tému postupne rozbaľujúci čo je položené dimension defined v ich farbeniach in amicable matrices with diagonal entries sequentially arrayed of multiplicity within their shadows decomposed climbing rose a space to rozmer definovaný dream to name cez spriatelené matice s uhlopriečnymi prvkami rad-radom odeté rozloženej v ich tieňoch násobnosti popínavá ruža priestor na snívanie o mene matching subterranean balanced internal rose involution straight ahead cycles of the incessant doubly covered security of words one complete design its permutations v súlade so skrytou vyvážená vnútorná ruža involúciou priamoidúce kružnice ustavičnej dvojmo pokryli istoty slov jeden úplný náčrt jeho poradia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 24 is it possible decompositions to construct then and a coherent symmetrical cycles configuration one by one tightly connected path perfect to itself

je vari možné rozklady potom zostrojiť a súdržnú súmerné kruhy konfiguráciu jeden po druhom pevne spojenú cestne dokonalé so sebou whose multiplicity we’re all can be disentangled so clumsy by asking on the ground the same question yet jetline differently in virtual air my všetci sme ktorých násobnosť tak nemotorní možno rozuzliť na zemi rôznym položením predsa však ako stíhačky tej istej v pomyselnom ovzduší otázky

our hill-climbing can we aim time compaction instead let’s try not so openly a slight refining become collapsible of the observation into deep forests náš výstup na horu miesto toho zhustenie času sa môžeme snažiť skúsme nie príliš otvorene trochu zjemniť o to, môcť zložiť sa pozorovanie do lesov hlbokých in the subspace where rosy labeling under the covering array up to one hope reveals the conjugation designed embedded unique sufficient for love’s essential rose something tactical v podpriestore kde značenie ruží pod zahaľujúcim šatom až na istá nádej odhalí spojenie náčrt vnorenej jedinečnej dostatočné pre kľúčovej ruže lásky isté taktické ~Bratislave, Slovakia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 25 Blessed Be Nouvelle Orleans

Johannes S. H. Bjerg Beau Boudreaux blessed be those the sculpture garden who walk the streets downtown glistens in wet rain talking to invisible friends— freight trains sound their horns for they shall bear the anger above autos flashing by of a merciless people the sun peeks through clearing sky blessed be fog burns off the lake those who serenade wood door behind her closes the houses she cycles the path for they shall remind us to the winding marina we’re safe behind walls her letters ready to send blessed be those ferry boats call each who sleep other after midnight while with their demons the avenue lights for they shall remind us oak trees clasp like heavy hands the night is long a dark tunnel for black cars glory befalls she streetcars roll downtown who waits he reads the Times on a bench for the next bus glancing at her as for she will remind us she passes with bright red bags to keep our seat warm from shopping sales for the fall blessed be he the boy shoots baskets who dances against the backboard outside on the train a jet flies above he will not catch his mom drives the highway home this winter’s flu for once the traffic gives way

~Nouvelle Orleans, Louisiana, USA blessed be he who walks his invisible dog he shall remind us to be thankful for small plastic bags

~Denmark

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 26 Jenny Ward Angyal Gerry Jacobson

oh brother plastered lying on a park bench on corrugated metal, head resting this enormous eye on your pack I enter the city eyes closed to sunlight through its lake of light ~Canberra, Australia ~Brooklyn, New York, USA

walking bumping fists, through those greyish streets— two homeless men slightly gritty unfold their cardboard just a little grimy messages of need just a few graffiti the lone poem in my pocket Upper Street N 1— ~Greensboro, North Carolina, USA morning drizzles diluting vomit on the pavement arrested wild joy in my heart for reading aloud after curfew the names of the dead ~London, UK how far their voices carry in the dark heavy traffic ~Vietnam Veterans Memorial, New York City, New York, in Valhallavägen USA it’s Thor’s day but where have all the vikings gone? the twin beams of the Tribute in Light ~Stockholm, Sweden go dark 10,000 lost birds find their way home grey dawn drizzles King Street ~World Trade Center site, New York City, New York, solitary USA sips of coffee in the Old Fish Shop café

chill café breeze through open doors tattooed waitress traffic chokes King Street the chef smokes unshaven

~Sydney, Australia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 27 after the hurricane Richard St. Clair a sunny day clouded by a dead sparrow in fluorescent light in the fallen leaves her pale skin even paler my age spots the raspy cries barely showing of the circling crows seem to taunt me: chest flutter I rake the fallen leaves still awaiting the result covered with frost of my BP test the first yellow leaves of fall she’s still not home from her baby shower the bank clerk the time-change moves my decimal point makes for an early dark sky to the far right what is more frightening? for a moment I’m rich the cold closing in a fly the sun lands on my phone closing out and before nightfrost I can get a swatter it has flown away a cold rain the walls turns into raging streams keep out the cold along the road even so my hopes fade to dreams my throat can’t my dreams fade to nothing keep out the cold the fall a wood fire leaves me bereft burning through the night of your touch the full moon yet I love captures my dreams the fall leaves as the flame does the moth refuge at home in a steady cold rain on the rocky coast puddles everywhere the crashing surf sends sand and the sky growing dark spraying through the air as if it knew my grieving in the fine mist a rainbow my sorrow at both ends

~Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 28 hiding Brendan Slater inside the touch not answering of the sun to the junkie on my neck the critic i cannot ~Flat #, ### Street, Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent, England feel

~Top Entrance to Hanley Park, Regent Road, Shelton, forever Stoke-on-Trent, England cupped in my hand forever whatever yes that is no slipping ~Hanley Park, Stoke-on-Trent, England through stone bile ~Footpath along the Trent & Mersey Canal, Between in the lift Longton Road and the Embankment, Trentham, Stoke-on- that I wish Trent, England would rise forever made up ~Homeless Hostel, Hope Street, Stoke-on-Trent, England prefabricated grey— is this the last finally image my child inside you has of me? I solve this maze ~Hanley Bus Station footbridge to the multi-storey car- of ever decreasing circles park, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, England ~Homeless Hostel, Hope Street, Stoke-on-Trent, England I’ve made my last mistake unaware and the sky until my lover has finally likens my eyes given in to piss holes in the snow ~Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent, England ~Snowhill, Stoke-on-Trent, England Angel, she catches he pulled her tongue the blade on me on the barbs and opened of her soliloquy this wound that will not close ~The Bars, Waterloo Road, Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent, England ~Early Hours, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 29 the fall i’ve been waiting for Matsukaze seems slow in coming— i live each tuft of grass in an estranged family and the people around me each of us carry vexation in our own ordained rings of hell drops of rain from aged cedars— with eager eyes i stretch out peering into the unknown across a hotel bed i wonder listening, listening . . . what life in Houston will be like tonight, on my knees one evening by the bed seeing the red cigarette-glow my sister fixes her nails of a customer the scent of acrylic in the air before he steps in the hotel to check in empty bedroom: mint leaves, the block their husky odor this young-old woman all over the sheets— blackened by drug use by window seeing nothing gives me a toothless grin: ‘hey handsome, wanna f^&k?’ tonight i am thoughtful, these hands evaluating in mid-sleep my soul, alone, quietly reaching to scratch under Mokichi’s red lights a bared thigh against cool sheets evening sky blurred, nearly obscure no peace from my 3rd floor room in this bamboo home darkness falls like petals, against walls the leaves of dahlias a perverted silence even in the wood seat 17F my seat-mates damp morning— are a lively bunch, edging quietly past full of suntanned smiles, the corner wall bright eyes and words separating me from his unhealthy anger for 3 hours my sister has i am corrupted . . . tap-danced her wild, seated before uneven blues an open window— on the carpet of my ears the men i sexed haunt me, accuse me . . .

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 30 in front near the bed of the vanity mirror pair of men’s leopard print tennies tracing a young star-in-the-making the age lines i pray he learns to walk in my dusk-darkened face before flying high would love for Brennen T. Johnson waking up to a foreboding snowfall all i can think of waking up to is tanka— your thigh on mine mastering tanka writing tanka . . . the colored woman and i this life in tankatown still sewing every other minute impersonal iron bars— speaking in the old of our own ordeals psych ward, a madman in white when they came for us dying from advanced syphilis i burned my waka burned each one in a living room in that broken field a young man where we lost much of us seated, writing tanka; the cool shadows over robust coffee brush against his skin the silent look of anger through the wall hearing by the futon the police arrive a man’s to take the Johnsons away black knapsack— a dusty ceiling fan in my with no movement 31st year of life discovering two women this ancient form waka . . . coming down the street hope to make these forever loud and gruff conversation— in their hands emerging a summer fear from a shaded grove sprigs of spruce caught quiet living room on this day gown— a teak table i’ve promised him i’d ask for no kids full of deodorizers— a clutter another walk of knick-knacks down this dark road down Belden street in this warm room my thoughts as scattered before a mirror as Louisiana palm leaves these young breasts this woman’s body unrecognizable ➢

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 31 ~Matsukaze, cont. previous days— was reckless on this narrow plane unafraid of any death buckled in even among to the left yellowing grass a chatty young woman asks me my sexual preference in this mausoleum of a house: this silent house a detective holding coolness and a councilman even the venetian blinds meet in the dank kitchen give a cold shoulder to sunlight even today i’ve banished my mother death— to an exile on 110th and Fairfield of no sound, no talk an aged woman’s fallen like being in silent film days down subway steps her life mingled with booze on reading of Konoshima’s father, some corner downtown i think of the dead one; a young man not many memories nods in recognition of the man who fathered me i do the same; no words between former lovers in this upstairs flat meeting yet another faceless and sat down indifferent man— this early afternoon someone outside over cool tea calls a woman a bitch discussing policy plans with an insurance man morning table in the foyer still not asleep, full of oh; this post-graveyard insomnia unread bills i sit and one pizza coupon reading Mokichi reading, reading one evening i longed for a priest around this home to absolve faded finery present and former beneath the smell of chrysanthemums, sins polishing another woman’s silver the end of a 12 hour shift from the third floor window winding up— in the distance passing one brown hand before the graveyard across this weary face this young rain approaching quickly

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 32 they bustle this hotel evening in pre-morning met in the lobby activity nothing but a smile, while i sit behind this desk glance, pondering my next verse and a touch exchanged tightening sleepless morning the tallit around popped in a dvd bony shoulders Strauss’s ‘Salome’ i follow him but lost myself out into the Judean cool in a sleepy man’s mania what is with an offering this covenant of mandrakes made the God of Avraham with unhealed leaves opens Leah’s womb that often mock me? for conception this cheap evening tonight the actress, men and women in inconspicuous garb; move with precision leaves the bar staggering through a misty rain down a cobblestone street walking their own stories leaving their bed paused a quiet visit in my cleaning of to a city cemetery the front room by their father’s grave this manic high wearing off i stand, a home-wrecker the whisper of high grass a young man cool New England night fresh out settles on the city of a drug clinic— frangipane scent the sun joins thick during this indecent a crackhead snorting meeting of limbs those blue against curtains have eggshell white walls seen photographs every heavy-handed of my spring time adultery slap dad gave mom accumulate dust ~Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA this evening my mind a boxwood of dead branches, leaves, and silent waka of blood and pain

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 33 Kelly Belmonte Kath Abela Wilson the nose ring, the tattoo, all night construction site and the haggis: in old Kyoto somehow it all made sense year of the cicadas at the time as loud as any drill they lure us into the heart of sound the way turning forty-five made him afraid ~Kyoto, Japan of turning fifty, how taking out the trash became symbolic all night Shanghai work crew planting red blooms ~United States down the median after last night’s acrobat show the hardhat gardeners

~Shanghai, China

in the old fishing town Ernesto P. Santiago broken steps to the beach would never pass code here of city streets rafts of sushi families as the surf weaving in and out—I, washes campside blankets without option, choose my community ~Busan, South Korea to enjoy the week-ends the glass skyscrapers so deeply comforting Hotel Poem Istanbul this old childhood town the real hotel city center should definitely have each room a poem the first sounds of sweet spring mine a “the sword” my pen is stronger than a crowded life, the scent of progress ~Istanbul, Turkey in the sunshine— the bleating of cows I surely do miss Persian nights at every restaurant wireless power poetry and music more people speaking in the old tradition different tongues— nothing veiled about this I feel better at home between races ~Tehran, Iran

~Philippines

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 34 in the city park an apparition a million tulips sent after billboard streets Holland to Ottawa thanks the leaning tower of almost for the birth of a princess three hundred spiral steps on international soil worn to pure white crescents

~Ottawa, Ontario, Canada ~Pisa, Italy painting roses Slovak hills then city center and gingko leaves the small souvenir shop on city crosswalks where a huge shepherd’s flute Pasadena you’re everything made by a local I ever wanted fits in oversize luggage

~Pasadena, California, USA ~Kosice, Slovakia

Santa Barbara condo night sounds in the city train whistle through our dreams roar of ocean, creek frogs, lions from next door zoo

~Santa Barbara, California, USA Fiona Tsang my view of the Susquehanna Harrisburg my father’s hideout shrill cry of a child after he left echoes through suburban streets years later the islands is it meant in play? in the river still windswept a sense of unease pervades behind brick & weatherboard ~Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA

James Joyce plane flies overhead at the harbor in Trieste light blinking in the night sky his old haunt like a wayward star a bronze Ulysses guiding weary travellers looks at my tanka book towards the departure lounge even in the new city old moss grows through pigeon on the roof here and there the ruins only lets us know he’s there an albino lizard scurries with his soft footfalls a Roman arch rasping gently on the tiles, then a fading rush of wings ~Trieste, Italy ~Australia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 35 Magdalena Dale Vasile Moldovan

Magdalena Dale, Romanian-English Translator / Traducătoră română-engleză instead of a coin a compassionate lady Đ. V. Rožić, English-Croatian Translator / looking at herself Engleska-Hrvatsko Prevoditeljica in the opaque glasses of the blind beggar

at the last story Umbre de toamnă of a skyscraper între cer și pământ the geranium un pâlc de arbori . . . in the light-tight window pe drumul șerpuitor is ready to bloom anew îmi port singurătatea cicatrized wound Autumn shadows inside of a oyster . . . between sky and earth a grain of sand a clump of trees . . . surrounded by walls on the winding road just like a fortress my loneliness new graffiti Jesenje sjene on the walls of the fortress između neba i zemlje two blue hearts grupa stabala . . . pierced without mercy na zavojitom putu by the Cupid’s red arrow moja usamljenost ~Romania Vise de zi aroma ceaiului pe buzele tale această mireasmă de tei intre mine și tine

Day dreaming the taste of the tea on your lips this fragrance of lime Tess Driver between you and me dart board and sofa Sanjarim old fridge for beers— okus čaja mates collect to chat na tvojim usnama solve problems of the world ovaj miris lipe the shed is a man’s place između tebe i mene ~Australia ~Romania / România

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 36 late evening in the city Eamonn O’Neill I see shadows conspiring in which doorway every young man should see Paris can we sleep tonight my Uncle said at night outside the hotel ~Dublin, Ireland prostitutes I ask the way to Notre Dame

~Paris, France a sea fog sweeps up the Liffey as Boardwalk junkies count the horsemen it gets late early here tonight Claire Everett that sea fog chilled some bones tonight stale cologne in a world of his own a five-o’clock shadow a Boardwalk junkie and yesterday’s shirt . . . convinced he is dead this brand new day selling itself at my door me unhealed wandering and wondering why do I need healing security guard/ at my age handyman surely I’m too old for that I keep his bed warm troubles beating down the door on a wall of our ramshackle life some two hundred years old a graffiti artist sprays this new estate who cares slick with winter rain walking their dog my grandson’s up and down my street all day christening the world and his wife he has a gay godfather and a straight godmother I’m kinda proud you know as the band tunes up shop-doorway shadows stir more shootings last night something this rush to die about a green hill the habit that must be fed outside a city wall a dog pisses on a tree sniffs and moves on ~England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 37 the sun is too bright Liz Moura for such a confession her dark hair I will wait for the soft glow floats into the stars of a new moon I despair to tell her of losing her this way in the humid air flowers on the balcony all night long opening, draping over our dark hair blends touching the warm stones tonight it doesn’t matter and her painted toes which of us is really gray leaving the sunlight to the late spring flowers a full moon I go seeking shade rises behind her the bright flower you plucked I see her eyes lies shriveling on the stones the swell of her breasts and that moon a hot late spring day with cherry-stained fingers purple lilacs she turns the pages shooing away bees reading about my love I cut two branches until she blushes because she says she loves them slender white hands poised to pick a flower making her coffee will they just touch it too much cream feel the soft petals too much sugar then let go she doesn’t care she kisses me tonight you pointed at the moon, at the stars who is this woman your slender finger too young for me balancing the lights in every way in that dark heaven yet my life belongs to her after all the rain a fresh breeze shakes out the trees thunderstorm and water drops fall a heavy spring day on her glasses, on her cheeks climaxes on my lips as I kiss her getting drenched is a joy we lay on the grass a pale hand rests on my arm another full moon beyond our bare feet many shooting stars an empty wine bottle a planet or two entertains a bee without her an empty night

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 38 her slender finger our balcony runs over the table closing my eyes tracing while she talks to the sun we both watch her fingertip and you tell her story dozing nude winter morning after making love a plover two women scoots away pouring milk from waves eating cookies but always returns summer sangria you blend it washing your hair I cut up the fruit my fingers slipping a cherry deep inside between your lips all the foam and the tangles humid weekend we sit for hours not speaking you tell me like we have done every morning for many summers you read your horoscope each day I hope daylily I will be in your stars two buds days away from finally carefully bursting open crossing the stream on stepping stones out for coffee once so large talking to her now so small about the weather not a cloud by the sea in the sky she shuts her eyes for a moment wandering eye to dream at my age just a little feeling everything everywhere all over again teasing her about her name one red blossom she doesn’t know remains tall I say it to myself firm petals every night brightening the autumn dusk ~Massachusetts, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 39 the body of a bird Patricia Prime flying seawards in the sun is like a flame never to be extinguished in broad daylight but to go on forever from the top of Mt Kaiti mist creeps across when she looks at me the city below, each street with that innocent face a streak of grey-blue as artless as a full moon the teenager takes my heart ~Mt Kaiti, Gisborne, SI, NZ completely by surprise

my shadow when I felt feverish in the evening I took the cold moon is so long and placed it it reaches out before me on my hot pillow to the next streetlight like a flannel on the cliff edge my heart began it’s hard not to lose beating out of time one’s balance like a broken tune and topple out and down so I took it out and threw it to the rocks below up among the stars ~Dover, England silently the birds float down to the mudflats their shapes the sea so perfect dark against the ocean out in the harbour and the tangle of mangroves where tankers sleep on the horizon ~Te Atatu Peninsula, Auckland, NZ before they enter the docks

~Waitemata Harbour, Auckland, NZ after the earthquake the cracks in the stairwell washed up on the sand jagged and creaking— a dead sea horse my daughter’s enforced the child holiday from work wants to take to school for ‘show and tell’ ~Wellington, NZ beach wedding the guests wear informal attire after we said goodbye of shorts and T-shirts— I felt your presence the couple in bare feet for days on the hot sand among the detritus of books, clothes and scent you left behind ~Muriwai, West Coast, NZ

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 40 I walk on the quay where the fishing boats Barbara A. Taylor are moored just to hear the slap and suck in the city center of the disturbed surface dwarfed by silver skyscrapers orange dots scale scaffolds eight minutes from one floor to another since she was called like ants in a colony to deliver a baby the intensive care paramedic arrives for the imminent birth every day’s the same . . . traveling through this smog ~New Zealand I ask: why did we move here? when can I retire?

window shopping dodging kids on cell phones skate boards and blades— why can’t they just stay home Roman Lyakhovetsky and quietly play scrabble? her lips moving too loud for a thought standing in line as she gives water I read news headlines to a wounded mariachi over her shoulder at ghost town square tallying the numbers of casualties a song carries me back to my mind’s corner of dead dreams huddled as driftwood turns to ashes under cardboard this summer night an old street-dweller greets me with smiles winter downpour— at the office door the flickering scoreboard invites me to become ~Australia part of this shabby hotel extended family telling the shrink about my sleepwalking the other night I cannot get my mind off the boke on her photo

~Israel

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 41 Grunge powerless, all i can do eight is rip you legs are weaving, to shreds like the with my eyes skinniest fingers, a home no matter my tarantula, how despised Rivet, in her dish i feel, even she once shat, we roaches why the fuck can fly would she do that? fantasizing she only steals i’m the to nourish her artful dodger children; as i try to but still I kill evade his blows the motherly mosquito the filthy punk’s taste in the flood might be questionable that destroyed but I would never my room think to question the the dead plant love in his coarse words finally watered seeing my words O Tantalus, in print it wasn’t until I lit is such a relief the chocolate candle that sole proof that I realised it was i ever existed an instrument of torture the trash bag the lucky man survived floats away the bombing of on the wind, Hiroshima the human trash his parting note read, stares in longing “fled to Nagasaki” he wants to see old janitor with his name in lights bald head, but he’ll settle clear eyes, for this on feathered wings bathroom wall takes to the skies after several long minutes electromagnetic she realizes grain of rice, preparing her home for RFID under my skin; winter is futile: my mark of the beast cardboard is just too flimsy or unrelated to sin?

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 42 curled above the cab she mentions the of the broken down rv catcalling over dinner a lock on my door “it’s something all i haven’t felt women endure,” mom says, this safe in years “you’ll miss it when you’re older” the scars poems on his back can’t pay a study the bills in human and neither sexuality can i over 30 years on and a drunken man lies touching students with in a pool of glass AIDS “he’s bleeding,” i say, still makes their caretaker and am taught the feel diseased skill of human apathy my uncle’s famine and war: house lies two horsemen empty, gutted my ancestors not even his sold themselves body returned to escape aging, the two men in solitary confinement looked into each time passing so slowly other’s eyes the young man lives “we are tattered now endless, empty generations but just as beautiful” inside his own mind the most sumptuous words like “mulatto” of Renaissance paintings and “halfbreed,” displayed on the computer my father’s racism of a girl with fine taste colours my in a dismal broken room childhood identity dreaming his memories i want my poetry of unwanted touches to be like and futile struggles; a fuck from your hating himself when true love he awakes, erect against a bathroom stall she retreats further science supply store into sweatpants and hoodie a chinese man’s at catcalls from remains worth $5000 too many slurred voices his wife’s skeleton wanting to “tap that nice ass” goes for more ➢

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 43 ~Grunge, cont. Amelia Fielden my mother she’ll trust me city hotel: with her life the scenery a weeping willow but not with hard against her mobile phone a stained concrete wall guarding overhead train tracks on the beach i pretend to find ~Kyoto, Japan messages from mermaids but that bottle was only left by drunken bums the house agent asks how far we want to live we’ve found the from garbage dumps land of and power stations—not milk and honey how close to beach or forest here in this mcdonald’s bin gospel service: prepping behind the trumpeter for the a candle flame apocalypse sways to Swing Low at the and then The Old Rugged Cross dollar store earth hour: ~Florida, USA electricity switched off we look younger by candlelight recalling land mines took the way we once were her leg her modeling ~Australia career she took for herself

~Cambodia a gaggle of laughing kids playing hide and seek behind the brothel where they work

~India

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 44 Susan Constable Britton Gildersleeve at the beep downtown homeless she replaces the battery a look she never aimed for in his hearing aid— layers of clothing if only it were as easy a plastic bag of what’s left to restore his failing mind from her suburban past

~Victoria, British Columbia, Canada night lifts a veil grotesque birds feed in snatches tearing bits of dream puddles a woman fights wings & beaks line the roadway while the city creeps closer two boys in boots and slickers Mondays are trash days kick pebbles through the clouds recycle bins form lines soldiers against waste green prophets in a red state the week’s laundry where what we waste defines us in three separate piles my days the wind cuts sharp coloured by joy, sorrow workers clutch coats and a lot of in-betweens huddle in tight packs like cattle in far fields like horses in tall grass a web of cards on my computer screen I dream of bees the black spider even on this city lot wending its way hives and fat bodies from ace to king the gold promise of honey the reminder of my roots windblown sleet last winter he died beats against the window nameless man behind the bank lantern light just a homeless man flickering across the page no one special no one known as a gun goes off just a guy freezing to death

~Nanoose Bay, British Columbia, Canada a hundred voices languages like coloured maps brown black white other the city’s polyglot song rising from the pavement

~Oklahoma, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 45 M. Kei in the evergreen silence before Christmas, she was a Pietà a baby is swaddled in a white tee shirt in his mother’s coat, and cornrows, a cardboard box for a cradle weeping over the body of the son she had loved the green cave of the woods with she was made its warning sign: of black charred wood this lot zoned scorched commercial by the fire of her son’s murder if my heart must bleed ~after the death of Trayvon Martin let it hang pink fire a flower offering itself to in the iron grip concrete of winter, a few snowflakes the mirror from a leaden sky made no comment in the Newtown Cemetery the night I appeared before it dressed in another man’s blood in third grade, a very serious argument whether Santa Clause is real— conquista el mundo unaware of the Grinch the ad tells me, bearing an assault rifle a pretty boy with a pretty woman ~Newton, Connecticut, USA around his neck my mother’s the white hand argument for gun control: of fate “if I had a gun, laid down its print there are times I would have shot on this once every one of my kids” verdant paradise

~Iowa, USA she calls to me in Spanish— is she humoring substitute teacher, my desire to learn, a slow accumulation or recalling memories of gifts of her Caribbean home? not intended for him on his desk

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 46 the shelter’s rules are reasonable: Ramesh Anand in by ten, up by seven, but this time, there is no sister taking my child to let me in when I am late through my memory lane of childhood awards ~Maryland, USA I talk of the writings of my mother barefoot in winter, the panhandler finds a way to pierce the vacant plot the indifference once the bamboo hut of passing shoppers in the hamlet father talks and talks ~Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA of his school crush in the street in the night Miss Gay Massachusetts my child cries touts her show waving her hand dressed in spangles at our loud argument— from head to heels thundering rain

~Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA holding the hip with her hands, my child at the rough bar eyes me and my wife the harbormaster involved in long kissing warned us about, deep breaths everywhere the barmaid gives us free tuna steaks father poses ~New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA in his first suit of lifelong desire— lightness of being him rush hour in my wedding on the Delaware Bay freighter ~Bangalore, India after freighter heading north

~Ship John Shoals, Delaware Bay, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 47 Santana Paul Mercken de held van Woodstock Paul Mercken, Dutch-English-French- nog steeds de meester op het North sea festival German Translator met zijn spetterende band Paul Mercken, Vertaler Nederlands-Engels- ~Rotterdam, Nederland, 2013 Frans-Duits

Paul Mercken, Traducteur Néerlandais– Santana the hero of Woodstock Anglais-Français-Allemand still going strong Paul Mercken, Überzetser Niederlandisch- at the North Sea festival with his stunning band English-Französisch-Deutsch ~Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2013 door de nevel Santana priemt een flauwe rode schijf: le héros de Woodstock de rijzende zon— domine toujours in de vallei au Jazz de la Mer du Nord dennenbossilhouetten avec son groupe éclatant ~De Belgische Eifel nabij Sankt Vith, België ~Rotterdam, Pays-Bas, 2013 through the mist a bland red disk pierces: arme Dracula the rising sun— hij begint oud te worden in the valley moet een nieuw gebit – pine tree wood outlines zelfs in de onderwereld klikt het klokje door ~The Belgian Eifel near Sankt Vith, Belgium poor Dracula à travers la brume he starts showing his age un disque rouge fade perce: needs a new denture— le soleil qui se lève— even in the underworld dans la vallée the clock goes on ticking des contours de bois de pins ~Transylvania, Romania ~L’Eifel Belge dans les environs de St.-Vith, Belgique

den Nebel zerrisst eine vage rote Scheibe: die steigende Sonne— im Tal Kiefer Wald Konturen

~Die Belgische Eifel in der Nähe von Sankt Vith, Belgien

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 48 the black doll Roary Williams and the white doll when black men say weren’t allowed in the front “I love you” of this big black train in the same voice that blew black soot into a coal night sky ~Detroit, Michigan, USA the word “negro” everyone in the market looks then turns away quickly downtown Detroit my manager tells me not to give applications to coloreds Carole Harrison only white kid at the concert Count Basie sneers at me screaming and walks away without I am, I am giving me his autograph grafitti— my need to be known the white man the script of my soul who wouldn’t shake my hand after I helped towering an old black woman over my market stall put on her coat a gum tree— shaded protection ten years old for pickpocketing fingers the first time I touched black skin the flash and checked my fingers of a neon light— to see if any came off immune now to the early warnings smiling white cashier of your angry outbursts the old black man sneers at Randwick and holds up the line the grand new race stand to count his change twice made of glass— if only it were so easy two black kids to see into tomorrow laughing loudly in the candy aisle ~Australia the owner keeps one hand on the baseball bat

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 49 Mel Goldberg Janet Lynn Davis omelets in a café touring homes at Lago de Chapala under construction— Spanish and English the freedom mix with the wafting odor to step right inside tortillas and jalapeñas our neighbors’ closets

~Lake Chapala, Mexico of all things, envious of a greenhouse: a death camp photo transparent in fading black and white clear through to its guts, hands grip barbed wire that gleam of sun on its back they will always look hungry they will never grow old young three times ~Chicago Holocaust Museum, USA the stray dog turns its head to look at me before disappearing at the old gravesite dreamlike into the woods my adult daughter hugs the ground puts her arms around ~Grimes County, Texas, USA the grassy area where my parents rest quietly autumn gust— ~Chicago, USA from all the earrings in the shop I pick out the pair snowy New Year’s Eve resembling spring leaves a party invitation fireplace embers ~outlet mall, Cypress, Texas, USA tell me to stay at home and read poems to my dog

~St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 50 Marilyn Humbert Stacey Dye on the day a candle Namatjira died quivers in the wind branches the leeward side of ghost gums blocks the gusts withered and fell and your punches

~Hermannsburg, NT, Australia stars Namatjira: Australian indigenous painter of ghost gums. broken and bent Ghost gums during times of stress, e.g. drought, drop drifting branches. across the midnight sky wishes lost along the way dipped red in outback dust a ghost, I walk you emerge from my past Yeperenye’s not all things crawling trails buried remain that way ~West Macdonnell Ranges, NT, Australia

Yeperenye: indigenous name of a furry caterpillar silence, which travels single file, nose to tail in a line, and the your weapon of choice indigenous name for the west Macdonnell ranges near Alice the battlefield Springs. full of sweet little nothings I wish you had thrown my way

~abusive home I escaped

Frank Watson I wonder who you would be through a gateway sadness overtakes me I saw Constantinople a tinge of red ancient church on new fallen snow through an ancient mosque ~hospital in a nearby city the organ vibrates twilight long after and fireflies the church door I am closes a glimmer of light in the darkness ~Turkey ~summertime back yard in Southern Georgia, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 51 Ken Slaughter Sergio Ortiz a backpack watching the moon with my life story inside rise above us in autumn the truth we lie together I twist and bend and sigh . . . bend just to get it in like question marks

why must she fret, heaving this fragrant rose, into the dumpster is she not meant a bag of things to know the essence I should have done of her own red bloom long shadows on the grass silence ~Grafton, Massachusetts USA found a tongue to haunt me sweat between the breasts a pigeon of sloe-eyed strippers outside the bar walking with a wobble a certain kind of Eden I wonder what it means holds me captive— to be more evolved your eyes are a green twine, the saddest of rope colleagues studying smart phones he touched in the elevator my hand and for moment I break the silence I was a woman with a fart his trembling lips whisper lies in the dark ~Marlborough, Massachusetts, USA realizing you’ve been dead running late a third of my life— I take the wrong exit milkweed flung and my grandson laughs from the pods of my soul he hasn’t yet learned how to panic I burn in the dark fire of ~Columbus, Ohio USA ambivalence . . . suffering is one very long moment

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 52 I manage terror by examining how things work, Debbie Strange count my sins, almost 60 and grip your rhythm to me still raiding my sister’s closet in the perfect form of stillness her hand-me-downs stitching the seams I can wait of body and soul together longer than sadness standing in the nursing home for hours among the sweet parchment skin cradles brittle bones narcissus in my garden a blue labyrinth inked on mother’s handscape ~Puerto Rico, USA time’s trembling calligraphy

school cancelled after the blizzard Poseidon’s statue in the park wears a red toque a snowball in his hand

Diana Teneva December the zookeeper walking morning in the tram— two reindeer I’m sick and dizzy through our village with so many practicing for the parade cell phone rings and conversations ~Manitoba, Canada skyscrapers mirroring the sundown nothing but last reflections in the beggar’s hat in line for the coffee vending machine I missed the bus there will be Toki another chance for me night fall summer in the town— moonlit lake no money for fall a honeymoon travel night the neighbors making apartment repairs ~United States ~Haskovo, Bulgaria

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 53 off a temple wall Bruce England the living face of a Mayan driving a car growing up in San José I learned home travels you can pack it up spread it out again two janitors in another house sit at opposite ends of the break room ~Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, working so long together Michigan, Washington, California, USA they have heard and said it all the wonder— a woman walking through walks into McDonald’s a cold, soaking rain lifts her t-shirt my shelter in a house to show some staring women and not a tree she has shorts on sitting— in the garage looking around my living room being torn apart outside my windows there is asbestos neat lawns and quiet streets the Mexican workers is this where I want to be? are wearing bandannas

~San José, California, USA there’s a nude lounging in my head no, not just in my head in a freeway jam there’s a nude lounging I saw a helicopter in a poster above my head lift and fly away creeping by, mangled cars were ready for towing if her mask slips you see into her nothingness ~680 Freeway, North of San José, California, USA if it holds in place she has remarkable breasts and long, slim muscular legs getting old I passed my first kidney stone not-unbearable I now know there’s a passage from dull pain to sharp pain

~Santa Clara, California, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 54 Mary Hind Alexis Rotella the tapping of moths Only five crystal goblets against the window as I set the table for six— tonight the one time my mother-in-law you’re probably flirting came to visit with someone on the ’net her humiliation in having broken one. gnawed by rats Tornado warnings the phone line she says to take cover— suddenly dead too tight I rather like the weatherwoman’s the silence tight red sheath.

~United States the grey of an English winter in another life the scent of apples from her long red hair imagining your flesh and bone reduced to ash Pravat Kumar Padhy this handful the street dog of old love letters with a bare bone the frail baby cries over the skinned breast the orchid you gave me under the shadow of neon light for my birthday has lost its flowers skyscrapers I wish eclipsing each other I had known you better I miss the calmness of the moon ~Melbourne, Australia with layers of chaos and crowd

I murmur some lines of rhyme the journey urges me to revisit memories of my village again

~India

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 55 the fortune teller Carole Johnston insists that I’m psychic reading my palm she charges me ten bucks my city to photograph her has one skyscraper blue glass reflects sunrise and clouds kids busking solitary blue heron bottle caps on their soles brass band plays on the corner every day old men loiter a place called Desire outside the liquor store crunching shards ~New Orleans, Louisiana, USA of broken whiskey bottles waving at kids on the street women in saris pass my front porch a caravansary of bags and babies turmeric and saffron

~Lexington, Kentucky, USA Violette Rose-Jones drug raid on the Philadelphia street cops and guns wrapped together in these sheets we watch from the window your lips forever seeking mine an old man stands guard the lavender dusk fruit bats swoop the river drinking deep the train trundles through ancient tunnels rich with graffiti slipping between art and philosophy lomandra and casuarina Philly to New York the scent of the river: decades have passed by ~Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA still you linger in me

~Australia back alley monday morning reeks Casuarina and lomandra are typical riparian vegetation on of spoiled milk the east coast of Australia. Lomandra is a rush plant but New Orleans trash truck despite this, its blooms have an intense fragrance its yawning hungry maw

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 56 Rodney Williams LeRoy Gorman southernmost tip passing my house of this island continent runners in training low as we could go & casually walking those long late drives back home the well-dressed man with our drunken father who drives a hearse

~Wilson’s Promontory, Victoria, Australia these shorter days at every checkout tabloids tell me stop-work marchers how to live turning the city-centre red— forever with a storm the power supply pretending goes out in sympathy it’s not a city ~Melbourne, Victoria, Australia cowboy hats in Calgary on this night train my haircut the blood-shot stranger swears a little shorter they’re just the same— lasts a little longer psych nurses with needles the day prison screws with batons my barber retires

~Frankston, Victoria, Australia when a food cart with chirping wheels rolls into palliative care home safe do they hear spring peepers after driving for hours do they feel desire no recall amber red or green on steps of the church from that last intersection of my epiphany snowfall is telling me ~Princes Highway, Victoria, Australia life is short skiing is good in the hills

new electoral boundaries the government says there’s no election near & birds flying south say winter’s nowhere near

~Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 57 outside the theatre Sylvia Forges-Ryan we spot the lead actress without makeup or costume looking no more special without skipping a beat than we do we all hurry past the Viking outside Carnegie Hall like my mother before me the beggar-musician coming to live in the city known as Moondog for the first time exhilarated by the rhythms during rush hour and even the dangers in the packed subway car someone slips a hand ~New York City, New York, USA between the buttons of my coat asking the cabbie with the strange accent where he’s from his answer takes me to a whole other landscape lost in thought as I pass by the homeless man Matthew Caretti in the soup kitchen line he stops me to ask what I think of him corner bar a butterfly probes coming home my single malt, after a hard day at work nectar corrupted I search for my key by human hands while trannies on the stoop critique my dress Times Square rehearsing a Cole Porter song even the pigeons in the next apartment distracted night and day the singer gets from the skies that one crucial word wrong between the lights every time

Broadway babies never tiring when her shoes of the moment just before become a hobby, the curtain goes up delusion is each of us reaches a custom-made closet for the other’s hand where mine used to be

~Pennsylvania, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 58 Michelle Brock Margaret Owen Ruckert upright pilgrims at Nude Café congregate to pay homage we search the walls for pictures to the lord of waste . . . artistic, risqué bottles clank . . . wheelie bins wonder where the nudes are— go bottoms up baring our expectations old bearded dragon limps across the lawn— He brings me latte arthritis with a smile, full to the brim— or lucky escape I always take large. from my canine neighbour? But is it really worth it? Is pleasure all in the Maths? footsteps fall in uneven treads along the street latte in a mug bare feet and stilettos so much milk, topped off with froth all the way from Italy but how much is right I ask myself, spooning up in a shopfront more froth than in a romance catching her reflection— surely that mannequin is wearing past cappuccinos her designer figure random cafés—Mother learnt teas were passé brushing off and now at ninety-three a gypsy selling postcards it’s cappuccino or nothing to the wind— inside the church I light a candle for my sins bubble, bubble big cakes and frothy coffee— ~Australia the café lifestyle impassions the suburbs we drown in trouble and toil twilight Kyoto streets twirl into lanes a cook I know silk flutters above the clatter works fifty-hour weeks of okobo on cobblestone Sunday lunches and still finds time to queue ~Kyoto, Japan for yumcha on Sunday night

~Australia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 59 after break-ups Johannes S. H. Bjerg I go for a long run sweating my body won’t have after being told off water enough for tears the homeless woman now shits in a pot ~Denmark after dark she empties it between parked cars six watches on each arm he tells his plastic bags to be quiet on the train by the wharf Dawn Bruce we refill the ocean stone by stone there’s fun to be had across city park with crumbling houses this late afternoon shadows darken the festive lights walking our dogs of the gas station we exchange confidences drags in taxi drivers it’s Eid and every car stereo a pause works at double overtime in the dog’s barking we hear no visitors our neighbour’s argument or long phone calls snarl into the silence about pills n stuff if the thermos didn’t talk shadows I couldn’t talk back of winter-bare trees criss cross I could do that the frosty sidewalk, take my bottled-up rage lead me to my empty nest out on a dumpster . . . it’s early autumn ~Sydney, Australia and still earlier spring in ruined arches the usual of a medieval castle rush of sirens ferns flourish and shouts above entwined initials on tv they count the warships of modern day lovers off the coast of Syria ~Winchester, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 60 from my cell Susan Burch I watch her train disappearing the scent of coconut you had to have it on my collar that 3,000 square foot house mini-McMansion if only I had known then interrupting dreams the small box you’d put me in the wood chipper splinters as he dumped me the morning’s peace I looked down how the trees shriek at my feet wishing I could take back my ‘fuck me’ boots pillow over head I roll away from the ~Frederick, Maryland, USA wall-banging still hearing the groans of the washer the Cigar Locker across the highway beckons me a mouthwash bottle the scent now filled with soap and stinkbugs of my mistress sits on the counter next to the sugar he stole a floating cemetery our identities yesterday while you watered the plants working on I fed the cat Bananagrams I fill the book since I lost my job with pink you’ve worked overtime eraser shavings to pay our bills you don’t see me anymore ~Hagerstown, Maryland, USA only red the washing machine watching whump Whump WHUMPS Everybody Loves Raymond unbalanced again I wonder why how I feel no one off my meds loves me leaving my cell ~Ocean City, Maryland, USA her click-clacking heels echo my thoughts 20 more years . . .

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 61 going Sanford Goldstein to the Jewish delicatessen with a clean milk bottle, told by my mother to ask for first afternoon twenty-five cents’ worth of chocolate soda crossing the huge Parisian boulevard, a man in a long coat make sure, tried selling me a packet of porn my mother tells me, to say “thin,” our first French meal, yes, slice the corned beef thin having to choose one item in I say to the delicatessen man each of three sets, a Frenchman at the next table suggests saussison aux frites so much talk in neighborhood Jewish homes how ridiculous about “kosher, kosher,” my wife and I felt in surprise still on Friday night in my family when our order came, we all ate out at the Chinese restaurant it was, believe it or not, french fries with hotdogs how often our Polish maid was given our first French meal my school bus pass, offered by my wife’s uncle, how terrified I was that we a tailor in France, would have to show our passes some day how delicious and surprising the chateaubrian au poivre how I longed to get on the chateaubrian the downtown bus to the theatre had a flame surrounding with my sister, the steak, after the movie at the Palace, and with the ice cream too later, a car struck me when I ran across the street France seemed a land of flames how aesthetic I took delight in the French loaf of long that crushed brown hat white bread, on the library table, outside we also eat the small portions it said so much about the freedom of what we buy at a market of our Cleveland urban life the magnificence of the cathedrals in France groups of young men as we enter, in front of several drugstores, some believers kneeling cigarettes all lit, in front of the confessional I envied what I thought was their manly behavior ~Paris, France ~Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 62 the cleavage Bob Lucky of these women at the bar York Minster if I were younger the choir warms up if I were . . . for evensong I know better but still turning covet the organist’s job down my lane late at night the eyes a plaque for the man of a hyena cub who thought he could swim ignorant of fear across the Ouse— I contemplate another pint power outage before taking the plunge we light left over Chanukah candles ~York, England the talk gradually turns to latke recipes seagulls gather at the fish and chips wagon ~Addis Ababa, Ethiopia lunch hour tourists don’t see the good luck in being shat upon

~Tobermory, Scotland

Eid-al-Fitr all the shops near my house Joanne Morcom closed for the day through the mud puddles a crowd coming home wends its way to the mosque to a dark house I wish I lived 50-cent drafts next door at the local beer garden where lights are on a friend and I watch sunbirds turn rabbits the light into poetry in the neighborhood seem friendly for the second time but just like people the waitress gives me too much they run away change— this time I keep it neighbor dies to give to a beggar was it suicide? if only this morning the sun I’d been kinder blinds me as I turn she might be alive down the lane a pack of donkeys laden ~Canada with baskets of coal

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 63 the summer sandals Genie Nakano lined up in the front hallway waiting to go out waiting for the rain storm light rain to pass into the next town everything smells good the ground, city streets a bright yellow blouse I sniff my hands and arms passing people on the street yes, me a young girl in smiles broadcasts to the entire world we live on the streets her inner happiness feet hot and swollen at night a silver keychain our bones freeze holding onto your house key tired of this home for months after the divorce becomes final I like when you remove the TV my small apartment two dogs newlyweds too poor and a husband for a vacation journey fit perfect inside plan the trip online hotels and restaurants in this room even which postcards to buy mom and dad lock me inside I can’t go out going to Jersey because I’ll run away turning page after page my clenched fists and jaw in the travel guide photographs and shopping tips ~California, USA something is missing—us because the rain does not stop for wishes we walk hand in hand through grey fog and damp leaves

alfalfa and hay in the bleak mid-winter barn among dairy cows, sour milk and manure, Joann Grisetti expectant calico cat

a folding door the railway station a sliding latching door dusty in the middle-day a bolted door when I traveled and still I feel unsafe into Philadelphia when hurricanes are swirling for new contact lenses ~United States

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 64 Randy Brooks Hristina Pandjaridis up late Diana Teneva, Bulgarian-English with a computer screen translator rook takes pawn my queen waiting nobody comes ever so patiently into my granddad’s old house guests this morning baby memorial falling leaves a French horn fills the sanctuary ribs it is well hotel room with my soul a single bed a casement window a bird flying in she didn’t mean to with an apple tree branch pepper spray her boyfriend ~Hristina Pandjaridis, Bulgaria it was just a test train crossing we invite a cold bicycler into the van to wait for passing coal cars Peter Fiore not wanting to let go of her long hug in the dorm après l'achat d'une nouvelle voiture, parking lot nous savions I do que nous ne serions pas retourner à Paris ~United States tout moment bientôt

after buying a new car we knew we wouldn’t be returning to Paris any time soon

~Paris, France

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 65 Du tanka traduit, écrit, publié en français: survol 1871-2013

Janick Belleau

Cet article, en six chapitres, évoque quelques 1.2 Puis, vient Judith Gautier (Paris, FR., gens de lettres ayant traduit, écrit ou publié du 1845-1917). C’est lors de l’Exposition universelle tanka en français depuis 1871. Le survol de Paris en 1878 que Judith rencontre le peintre historique est agencé, grosso modo, de façon Yamamoto Hōsui. Un peu plus tard, elle fait la chronologique. Je présente écrivainEs et poètes connaissance de Kinmochi Saionzi, Conseiller en notant leurs réalisations d’envergure en poésie d’État de S. M. l’Empereur du Japon, venu d’inspiration japonaise. Parfois, je partage mes étudier les principes de la démocratie occidentale. impressions quant à la lecture d’une œuvre. Je D’une étroite collaboration des trois amiEs, est cite quelques tankas m’ayant touchée. Je termine née l’anthologie Poëmes De la Libellule (1885)7: le en pensant au futur. Conseiller d’État a offert, à partir du japonais, une traduction littérale en français; l’écrivaine (J. 1. Du waka traduit: 1871-1928 G.) a adapté les textes sous forme de waka. Les Ce serait inconvenant de débuter cet article 88 poèmes, empruntés au Kokin-wakashū, sont sans mentionner l’origine nippone du tanka précédés d’un extrait de la célèbre préface de Ki contemporain et ses débuts en France. Dès 1898, no Tsurayuki8. Yamamoto les a illustrés. Pour sous l’impulsion du poète MASAOKA Shiki avoir tenu entre mes mains et lu cet ouvrage, je (1867-1902), on ne parlera plus au Japon de puis affirmer qu’il s’agit d’une œuvre ultimement «ūta» ou de «waka» (né au VIIIe siècle) mais de raffinée. La dédicace liminaire (signée, J. G.) de la tanka. En francophonie, la nouvelle appellation compilatrice à Mitsouda Komiosi offre un aperçu sera plus lente à être adoptée. Pour mémoire, de son propre style: rappelons l’importance de trois précurseurEs du tanka, fin du XIXe/début XXe siècle, en France. Je t’offre ces fleurs Ces gens de lettres l’ont fait découvrir en le De tes îles bien-aimées. traduisant/l’adaptant du japonais. Sous nos ciels en pleurs, 1.1 Léon de Rosny (Lille, FR., 1837-1914) Reconnais-tu leurs couleurs est le premier à publier un ouvrage rassemblant Et leurs âmes parfumées? 9 des poèmes d’anciens recueils japonais dont Man’yōshū1 et Hyakunin-isshū2: Si.ka.zen.yō— Si l’on tient compte de cette inscription, Anthologie japonaise, poésies anciennes et modernes des Judith Gautier est la première femme de lettres à Insulaires du Nippon (1871).3 Dans son avoir écrit un waka en français rimé et rythmé Introduction, le traducteur donne, entre autres, sur 31 syllabes (5-7-5-7-7). les règles qui régissent l’ «outa»4 ainsi que le 1.3 La Franco-Nippone Kikou Yamata waka/le tanka qu’il soit chanté ou psalmodié: les (Lyon, FR., 1897-1975) a commis deux œuvres poèmes «doivent renfermer une idée complète en reliées au tanka. Une première: Sur des lèvres 31 syllabes formant deux vers: le premier de 17 japonaises (1924)10, anthologie confectionnée à syllabes (5-7-5), avec deux césures; le second de partir de ses traductions de légendes, de contes et 14 syllabes (7-7), avec une seule césure.»5 Le de poèmes courts (haïku et tanka dont sept de premier vers «renferme une idée» et le second YOSANO Akiko) publiés depuis le VIIIe siècle. Le «fournit le dénouement ou la conclusion»6. Aussi livre est précédé d’une lettre-préface du poète rébarbatif qu’apparaît cet ouvrage, à première Paul Valéry. Une seconde: Le Roman de Genji vue, force est de s’incliner devant l’érudition de (1928)11—il s’agit de sa traduction des neuf M. de Rosny et de lui savoir gré d’avoir dispensé premiers chapitres du Genji monogatari de son savoir si généreusement. MURASAKI Shikibu. La romancière-traductrice

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 66 s’est inspirée de la version anglaise d’Arthur nécessite deux parties: en général, la première Waley12 et du texte original ancien. Fait à noter, offre une scène de la nature ou du quotidien; ce c’est sur son initiative que l’Hexagone s’est sont les sens qui sont sollicités. La deuxième intéressée à l’art de l’arrangement floral, l’ikebana, partie transmet l’impression, l’intuition ou le sa passion. sentiment que l’observation de cette scène évoque chez l’auteurE. Le cœur s’exprime idéalement 2. Du tanka écrit dans la décennie de 1920 sur des thèmes universels donnant ainsi l’occasion C’est après la Première Grande Guerre à la lectrice, au lecteur de partager l’émotion du qu’est né le tanka francophone. Jusqu’à poète ou, encore mieux, d’expérimenter la sienne récemment, Jean-Richard Bloch (Poitou, FR., propre. 1884-1947) était considéré le précurseur avec haï- Au Canada francophone, un seul auteur kaïs & outas, écrits en 1920.13 En décembre de s’est, dans les années 1920, intéressé à l’«outa»: l’année suivante, il récidivait avec 16 poèmes Jean-Aubert Loranger (Montréal, QC, courts appelés «tankas» et parus dans Les Cahiers 1896-1942). Le journaliste, conteur et poète est idéalistes. aussi considéré comme le premier poète «moderne» du Québec. Dans son deuxième Si la photo est manquée recueil, intitulé Poëmes (1922)17, il propose 31 Qu’est-ce qu’il va rester tankas dans la section Moments, «Sur le mode De la tendre et chère figure? d’anciens poëmes chinois—Haikais et Outas», celle-ci —Un trait sur le sable, contient des suites composées de deux ou trois Une image dans la mémoire.14 poèmes. L’écrivain suit «de très près l’actualité Pour l’essayiste, Dominique Chipot, c’est littéraire de Paris»18. Nous savons qu’il Émile Lutz, gagnant du concours «Poèmes «dédaignait les classiques et ne lisait que (Jules) asiatiques» organisé par le journal Comoedia15 en Romains ou la N.R.F.»19. La Nouvelle Revue 1911, qui, le premier, a écrit un tanka Française accueillait des poètes de l’avant-garde francophone rimé et rythmé sur 31 syllabes16: qui s’enthousiasmaient pour la poésie d’origine nippone. On peut supposer que Loranger, Sous nos avirons curieux des poètes modernes, ait pu lire d’autres Les ombres des fleurs, des branches revues et ouvrages récents avant la publication de Découpent des ronds ! son recueil. Dès lors, on pourrait penser à l’essai Et voici qu’en lignes blanches de Paul-Louis Couchoud, Sages et Poètes d’Asie.20 Les traversent des hérons ! Ayant séjourné en France, dans la capitale et à l’Ile-d’Aix en Poitou-Charentes, du 13 avril au 18 À mon humble avis, le tanka contemporain, décembre 1921,21 il a peut-être subi l’influence de qui se veut classique, s’astreint à la régularité de Jean-Richard Bloch qu’il aurait pu rencontrer 31 syllabes (5-7-5-7-7); les poètes, préférant une lors de son séjour à l’Ile-d’Aix car Bloch possédait certaine liberté, opteront pour la formule de vers une «maison en Poitou»22 courts-longs-courts-longs-longs. Dans tous les cas, les vers sont répartis sur cinq lignes. Deux vers L’averse tombe sur le toit : peuvent avoir la coquetterie de rimer mais, en Ma chambre sonore s’emplit règle générale, il vaut mieux que les rimes soient D’une rumeur d’applaudissement. en tête ou au milieu du vers; en français, on aimera aussi les assonances et les allitérations Avec le jour qui diminue, pour la sonorité dont elles enveloppent le poème. La lampe grandit et m’atteint. 23 Celui-ci comporte peu de ponctuation et pas de majuscules sauf, peut-être, en français, la Je ne puis lire ce poème court de Loranger première lettre du premier mot. Le tanka sans m’émouvoir du lien entre jeunesse et

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 67 tristesse. La forme du tanka n’est pas respectée ( . . . ) On dit au Japon que c’est avec son sang mais l’esprit y est. Je soupçonne le poète d’avoir qu’on écrit le tanka: c’est-à-dire, que son joué avec le nombre de syllabes requis . . . par expression doit venir des profondeurs de l’âme; et anticonformisme ou pour se rapprocher des j’ajoute que c’est par l’observation continue et la poèmes écrits par J.-R. Bloch. Notons brièvement contemplation des choses terrestres et célestes que le contenu des tankas de Loranger laisse qu’on arrive à sa bonne composition.»31 En voici supposer qu’il écrit de la nuit à l’aube alors que le deux tirés de Sakura: silence le porte à voyager entre deux mondes, l’ici et l’ailleurs, et à exprimer ses états d’âme. La Bretonne chante En berçant son petit gars, Minuit. La mesure est pleine. Un fils de marin; L’horloge rend compte Mais le bruit qui l’environne Au temps de toutes les heures N’est pas celui de la mer . . . (p. 31) Qu’on lui a confiées. L’horloge sonne et fait sa caisse.24 Des poètes de tanka contemporain boudent les textes de l’avocate du tanka régulier; on lui Loranger pressent-il que sa vie sera brève? reproche son «observation continue et la Que l’heure de rendre des comptes sonnera tôt contemplation des choses terrestres et célestes» pour lui? Que sa carrière de poète sera terminée nommément les oiseaux et les fleurs de sa cour après ce deuxième recueil? privée ou des jardins publics. Pourtant, il y a parmi ses tankas des moments très intimes qu’elle 3. L’exclusive filière française: partage avec nous: 1948-197225 Le partenariat de Jehanne Grandjean (Paris, L’oreille aux aguets, 1880-1982), avec le Japonais, Hisayoshi Essayant de percevoir Nagashima (Tokyo, 1896-Paris, 1973) a donné Le bruit de ses pas . . . des ailes au tanka en France. En effet, le couple Sans cesse, le cœur battant: professionnel puis civil26 s’est consacré à la Toujours mon espoir déçu . . . (p. 127) promotion de ce poème avec un dynamisme extraordinaire et une ferveur presque religieuse. Sachant que Madame Grandjean est née en En 1948, Nagashima fondait à Paris, l’École 1880 et que Sakura a été publié en 1954, on internationale du tanka; madame devenait son appréciera qu’un corps septuagénaire abrite le bras droit. En octobre 1953, naissait la Revue du cœur d’une jouvencelle. Jehanne Grandjean est tanka international; elle en assura la direction- décédée à l’âge de 102 ans. Elle a vécu neuf ans générale et la rédaction en chef . . . jusqu’à la après le décès du bien-aimé. Le couple cessation de la revue en 1972. Grandjean-Nagashima a fait, à la Société des Dans ses moments libres, la «créatrice du Gens de Lettres, un don par testament. Ce legs tanka régulier»27, c.-à-d. en 31 syllabes sur cinq permet à la Commission des aides sociales lignes non rimées, a fait publier deux recueils d’attribuer de l’aide financière aux auteurs en personnels. Le premier, Sakura—jonchée de tankas28 difficulté32. (1954); le second, Shiragiku—jonchée de tanka29 (1964). Entre les deux livres, a paru son essai, 4. Du tanka publié entre 1990-2009 L’Art du tanka: Méthode pour la composition du tanka, 4.1 André Duhaime suivi de tankas inédits30 (1957). Ce Québécois (Montréal, QC, 1948- Pour Madame Grandjean, «le tanka repose Gatineau) a toujours privilégié l’avant-gardisme sur une base solide: ( . . . ) rien n’est imaginé: il est en poésie. Dès 1985, il écrivait dans l’Avant- l’instantané d’une impression ressentie; ( . . . ) de propos de Haïku, Anthologie canadienne (codirigée plus, rythmé par les battements du cœur, il lui avec Dorothy Howard) bilingue que des poètes communique toute l’émotion qu’il contient. «respectent les règles traditionnelles, (. . . d’)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 68 autres sont davantage modernes et boire de la bière expérimentaux».33 et hurler plus fort Il récidivait en 2001 dans l’Avant-propos de que la rivière en crue son anthologie du haïku contemporain en les mains passent français, Chevaucher la lune: des «spécialistes demeurent les souvenirs (p. 57.2) émettent régulièrement de sérieux doutes quant à la composition de haïkus en d’autres langues que 4.2 Duhaime et autres le japonais, les poètes tentent l’exploration et C’est à l’aube du 21e siècle, que le tanka l’expérimentation . . . »34 ; il est permis de prend véritablement son envol en terre supposer que ces paroles peuvent aussi québécoise. Trois recueils personnels, composés s’appliquer au tanka. Encore aujourd’hui, il taille d’un mélange de tanka et de haïku, sont publiés: autrement les deux joyaux poétiques de l’archipel Humeur/Sensibility /Alma par Janick Belleau nippon—une promenade sur son site vous en (2003); À deux pas de moi par Patrick Simon (2006); convaincra.35 et, Séjours par Duhaime (2009). André Duhaime est le premier à avoir écrit un recueil complet de tanka. Il demeure, pour 5. Deux lieux pour le tanka depuis 2007 moi, l’incontestable premier promoteur du tanka 5.1 Patrick Simon au Canada français. Après avoir lu de TAWARA Le Franco-Québécois (Metz, FR., 1953- Machi (1962- ) sarada kinenbi en traduction Mascouche, QC) a certes aimé son expérience de anglaise (Salad Anniversary) 36, il commet son ce poème car il fonde la Revue du Tanka francophone premier livre de tanka, Traces d’hier 37 (1990). (RTF) en 2007. Une telle revue littéraire n’existait L’auteur rompt avec la forme et la délicatesse plus depuis la disparition en France de la Revue du de l’expression. Pour lui, il s’agit «de ne pas fuir tanka international en 1972. Au printemps 2014, la dans la rêverie poétique, mais bien d’entrer dans revue en est au 21e numéro. Publiée trois fois l’an, le réel. Le beau et le vrai ne sont pas toujours elle se veut «un espace de création et d’échanges jolis»38. Sur le plan de l’esprit, il est d’avis que le autour du tanka»40. Outre l’éditorial, la RTF tanka est un poème lyrique composé d’un tercet comprend quatre sections régulières: 1. Histoire et d’un distique, «cette deuxième partie venant et évolution du tanka; 2. Tanka de poètes comme réponse, ou relance, à la première. Le contemporains (les tankas sont sélectionnés à distique est généralement l’expression d’un l’aveugle par un jury mixte soit québécois et sentiment (ou un commentaire) suscité par un français); 3. Renga, tan-renga et tanka & prose objet concret ou l’ici/maintenant mentionné poétique; 4. Présentation de livres d’auteurEs dans le tercet.»38b sous forme de recensions et de comptes-rendus. Ses poèmes, comme ceux de Machi dans Inlassable amoureux du tanka, Patrick sarada kinenbi (L’Anniversaire de la salade 39), sont Simon crée, en 2008, les éditions du Tanka aussi intimes et vrais que les wakas écrits à la francophone. Il a publié à ce jour (novembre Cour impériale de jadis—seuls les termes et le 2013) 18 titres—12 auteurEs en solo (dont trois ton ont changé. Le thème qu’il traite, celui de la femmes) et trois en duo d’auteurEs. Parmi les séparation conjugale, fait appel à l’intelligence du poètes en solo, quatre offrent leur recueil en deux cœur. Certaines ruptures de forme peuvent, langues dont trois en français et en anglais soit d’après moi, être permises en tanka, résolument Belleau (mars 2010), Claudia Coutu Radmore contemporain, si l’esprit est respecté. (mai 2010) et Alhama Garcia (juin 2013). L’éditeur publie en format traditionnel (papier) d’un côté puis de l’autre mais aussi en formats e-pub (numérique) et PDF. oscille Son catalogue inclut, entre autres, une Anthologie le ventilateur du Tanka francophone sur laquelle nous reviendrons ai-je raté ma vie plus bas. ai-je fait exprès (p. 42.1)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 69 Pour lui-même, Simon s’attache à la s’est mérité le Prix littéraire Canada—Japon rythmique des chiffres impairs (5 et 7) en poésie; 2010.45 il préfère donc écrire, comme Jehanne Grandjean, du tanka régulier, compté sur 31 Ondée sur les feuilles syllabes. En voici deux tirés de l’anthologie: le vent la balayant je ne dirais pas non Framboise à fleur d’eau à une saison éternelle franchir le pont de cette île le goût de toi sur mes lèvres (p. 71.1) tellement chantée à fleur de peau te sentir 5.3 Du tanka francophone en comme la soie sur ton corps (p. 90.1) anthologie Également en mars 2010, Patrick Simon Éclats orangés ouvre le bal des ouvrages collectifs en dirigeant et c’est le coucher du soleil publiant la première anthologie consacrée au sur la tour de verre tanka francophone contemporain. Son le temps de me retourner Introduction situe le début d’un intérêt en France je suis au crépuscule (p. 91.3) pour le tanka vers la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle. La chute du shōgunat, suivie de la 5.2 Janick Belleau Restauration de l’Empereur, permet au Japon de Étant l’auteure de ce survol historique, vous s’ouvrir à l’Occident. Dès lors, des objets d’art conviendrez avec moi que la modestie s’impose font leur apparition dans les Expositions dites quant à mon apport à la poésie d’origine universelles tant à Londres qu’à Paris. C’est japonaise. beaucoup grâce à celles-ci que le japonisme s’est Janick Belleau (Montréal, QC, 1946- ) installé dans les salons fréquentés par les peintres s’intéresse au haïku et au tanka. En haïku, elle a impressionnistes, charmés par l’estampe nippone. dirigé trois collectifs dont Regards de femmes—haïkus L’influence du mouvement pictural s’est étendue francophones précédé d’un historique du haïku à la littérature. Déjà Paul Verlaine dans ses Poèmes féminin et francophone41. En tanka, elle saturniens (1866) façonne des «poèmes rythmés de contribue régulièrement à la RTF, depuis sa cinq ou sept syllabes»46 qui suggèrent des création en 2007, des articles de fond et des paysages, des impressions, des états d’âme; ce poèmes. Elle a codirigé, sous la direction de M. faisant, le poète effleure «l’esthétique de la poésie Kei, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 4 japonaise classique». Stéphane Mallarmé (2012)42. La même année, elle a dirigé un collectif poursuit «les recherches des poètes, comme pour la revue électronique de M. Kei Atlas Poetica, Verlaine et Rimbaud, autour du rythme, des vers un Special Feature intitulé Chiaroscuro—25 LGBT impairs, et notamment les 5 et 7 syllabes que l’on Tanka.43 Elle a publié cinq recueils de poésie retrouve» en tanka. Puis, l’anthologiste enchaîne personnels dont D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and wings avec des notes sur l’écrivaine/traductrice, Judith (mars 2010).44 Gautier, sur des poètes dont Jean-Richard Bloch D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and wings: pour la et Jean-Aubert Loranger et, sur la poétesse première fois, depuis près d’un demi-siècle, une Jehanne Grandjean. femme poète de la francophonie (depuis Jehanne Finalement, l’éditeur explique que le Comité Grandjean) offre un recueil complet de tanka. Un de sélection a privilégié des «poèmes qui plus, il est bilingue. «Avec sensibilité, tendresse et expriment les sentiments les plus intenses avec sincérité, l’auteure partage, en 91 poèmes courts, une musicalité, une légèreté et une retenue, tout un chemin de vie semblable à celui de plusieurs en respectant la forme du tanka.» L’ouvrage contemporaines . . . (quatrième de couverture). compte 47 auteurEs, autant féminins que Le recueil est précédé d’un historique du tanka masculins, dont 21 viennent du Canada et 22 de féminin depuis le IXe siècle. L’ouvrage de Belleau

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 70 la France. Le Comité a retenu 207 tankas, inédits longtemps attendu, Le livre du Tanka francophone pour la plupart, sur 854 reçus. (décembre 2011). Dominique Chipot (France, 1958- ) trace l’histoire de ce poème en Tu me voles un baiser francophonie, du XIXe siècle à aujourd’hui. j’agrippe ton col et t’embrasse C’est un ouvrage extrêmement fouillé, les tout doucement sources sont diversifiées, les notes de bas de page deux papillons sur la branche généreuses. L’auteur remonte le cours du temps se balancent dans la brise avec minutie. Son amour de la recherche et du p. 94.2, Jessica Tremblay, Vancouver, C.-B. Japon émergent de page en page. Chipot découpe son étude en cinq parties: 1. Un frêle sampan Les premiers tankas francophones; 2. École et surgit des eaux boueuses Revue du tanka international (suivies de deux Mékong oh ! Mékong portraits, l’un de la Française, Jehanne le sourire édenté Grandjean et l’autre du Japonais, Hisayoshi de la vendeuse de fruits Nagashima); 3. L’art du tanka francophone; 4. p. 53.2, Patrick Faucher, FR Du génie poétique, la rhétorique du waka; 5. Bibliographie. Le temps d’un regard Arrêtons-nous un peu sur les instructives l’espace qui s’arrondit parties trois et quatre. Dans la partie trois, mi-soleil mi lune l’essayiste examine à la loupe le tanka en se deux enfants à la marelle basant sur les trois points formulés par crayonnent le jour la nuit Nagashima et endossés par Grandjean, «forme, p. 40.1, Jean Dorval, Québec, QC fond et esprit»: la forme commande «rythme, concision et complétude»; le fond exige Chassés par des loups «simplicité, réalité et précision»; l’esprit réclame sur les chemins de l’exode «sincérité, sensibilité et suggestivité».47 L’écrivain des gens par milliers. puise copieusement dans les articles de la Revue du les lèvres de la fillette tanka international (1953-1972) du couple ont la couleur des myrtilles Nagashima/Grandjean et dans L’art du tanka p. 52.1, Danièle Duteil, FR. (1957) de Jehanne Grandjean. Sources, selon moi, tout à fait appropriées puisque c’est dans ces La moto chromée pages que le tanka francophone a véritablement dans son allure de cuir pris racine. part à l’aventure Dans la partie quatre, l’auteur rend deux sacoches «hommage au génie poétique japonais» en pleines de vent . . . expliquant des techniques d’écriture «si p. 102.3, Nanikooo Tsu, Cantley, QC spécifiques à la poésie»48 nippone. Il explique la fonction de certains mots en citant des poèmes Sans crainte d’être surpris japonais translitérés en alphabet latin et traduits seul dans la nuit noire en français, soit par Sumie Terada49, soit par la tête au vent Michel Vieillard-Baron50. Prenons l’exemple de mains ouvertes et bras tendus l’une de ces techniques, le honka-dori: «par ce j’étreins la lune procédé, un poète emprunte des éléments à un p. 110.1, André Vézina, Québec, QC poème ancien pour créer ‘un jeu de résonnance qui s’opère entre deux poèmes. [§] Pour ce faire, 5.4 Dominique Chipot il est nécessaire que le poème qui sert de base soit Pour continuer avec les ÉTF, l’une des clairement identifiable; tout emploi indistinct est parutions-phare de la maison est un ouvrage considéré comme un vol’».51

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 71 Je me permets de reproduire un poème, lu et parallèlement à la création de sa revue dans un numéro de la RTF, d’un auteur ayant trimestrielle, Gong. En 2006, elle codirigeait, avec manié cette technique avec succès. Belleau, l’ouvrage collectif L’Érotique poème court/ haïku, finaliste au Prix Gros Sel du Public de Matin d’amour Belgique.55 Dans le firmament du tanka, bien après la sonnerie du réveil Micheline Beaudry a collaboré étroitement caresses et baisers (articles de fond et sélection de poèmes à sans être lassé l’un de l’autre l’aveugle) à la RTF depuis sa naissance en 2007 il a pourtant fallu se séparer jusqu’en 2011 inclusivement. En mai 2012, elle Michel Betting, FR.52 publie son premier recueil de tankas dans les deux langues officielles du pays, comme une étoile Une recherche sur la Toile m’a permis de filante/like a shooting star. 56 repérer le poème japonais ancien auquel sont Dans son Avant-propos, l’écrivaine cite, de empruntées les deux dernières lignes du tanka façon chronologique, des poètes ayant écrit sur contemporain. Il s’agit d’un waka de Ki no l’Amour, tant dans le Japon classique (les moines 53 Tsurayuki : Saigyō et Ryōkan, la bonzesse Teishin) que moderne (YOSANO Akiko) et contemporain Musubuteno/Shizuku ni nigoru/Yama no i no/ (TAWARA Machi et Mayu); puis, elle enchaîne Akademo hito ni/Wakare nurukana avec des poètes du Québec (Loranger, Duhaime, Belleau) qui ont écrit ou écrivent sur ce thème indémodable. L’eau s’égouttant de mes mains/Trouble la clarté/Du L’auteure évolue avec aisance dans la puits de la montagne/Sans être lassé l’un de l’autre/Il a poétique du tanka qui, explique-t-elle, «appelle pourtant fallu se séparer 54 une écriture sensorielle et une grande maîtrise du non-dit» 57; ce faisant, elle permet au lectorat de L’idée du honka-dori est facilement se promener dans le pays de l’imaginaire, le sien transposable dans une culture autre que nippone: propre et celui de la poète. unE auteurE d’aujourd’hui peut reprendre quelques mots d’une œuvre classique connue de la saulaie ses compatriotes, et les insérer dans son propre dans la solennité du jaune chartreux poème. Pour que le lectorat comprenne qu’il au crépuscule s’agit d’un compliment et non d’un plagiat, je sors de mon corps l’auteurE doit, comme l’a fait Michel Betting, pour toucher l’autre vie (p. 72.1) mettre le fragment d’emprunt (une seule ligne, de préférence) en italiques (ou dans une autre police) La lectrice a l’impression que le recueil, et indiquer, dans une note, le nom de l’écrivainE contenant 77 tankas, est structuré selon les à l’honneur. souvenirs de l’auteure: on dirait que la poétesse souhaite que l’œil lecteur vagabonde avec elle en 6. Du tanka publié extra-muros entrouvrant la porte de son jardin secret. Est-on Il semble que la réussite des initiatives de jamais seule sur les sentiers du rêve ou dans le Patrick Simon ait donné le goût à des poètes parc des souvenirs? Échappe-t-on au regret de francophones, soit de voler de leurs propres ailes, devoir quitter la vie? soit de bâtir un nid sous d’autres cieux. On ne peut qu’encourager la multiplication des lieux j’ai aperçu favorisant l’essor du tanka. les grands arbres du Cimetière 6.1 Micheline Beaudry près du fleuve Dans l’univers du haïku, Micheline Beaudry est-ce là l’ombre ultime (Montréal, QC, 1942- ) participait en 2003 à la et l’éternel bruissement? (p. 60.1) fondation de l’Association francophone de haïku

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 72 6.2 La vogue des collectifs et des Dans l’Avant-propos, Berger et Montreuil anthologies expliquent au lectorat leur vision du tanka: «Vous Un an après l’Anthologie du Tanka francophone remarquerez que les ‘tankas de chez nous’ sont de Patrick Simon, d’autres anthologistes prennent presque tous plus brefs que 31 syllabes ( . . . ). la relève. En avril 2011 donc, J’amour, ouvrage L’ajout d’autres syllabes impliquerait ( . . . ) le collectif réunissant 65 tankas de 32 auteurEs risque de trop dire. Notre but étant de mettre en (dont 21 femmes) du Canada francophone et de valeur l’essence brève et allusive du tanka, nous la France faisait son apparition dans la capitale avons choisi des poèmes qui laissent la parole à québécoise. Les deux responsables, Duhaime et l’espace blanc qui les entoure. C’est aux lecteurs, Hélène Leclerc (née 1972), mentionnent dans la maintenant, de faire parler le blanc.»60 Préface qu’ils ont «cherché à donner une représentation actuelle de l’amour, plus les cercles parfaits particulièrement celui que peuvent connaître les de la toile d’araignée – jeunes. ( . . . Ceux-ci) y retrouveront leurs propres la lumière blondee émotions, leurs questionnements, leurs doutes et de l’automne se glisse y puiseront sûrement de l’inspiration.»58 dans mes souvenirs d’enfance p. 28, Monika Thoma-Petit, Montréal, QC je l’ai vue la blondee de mes rêves septembre dans le corridor éclaté en silence entourée profond de l’équipe de football ton regard prune p. 16.1, Mike Montreuil, Ottawa, ON je te prendrai doucement p. 27, Claude Drouin, Laval, QC Il se hâte Une rose à la main un verre de brandy Vers une autre comme à chaque anniversaire Son regard me traverse sa lettre jaunie Sans me voir le souvenir d’une étreinte p. 25.2, Geneviève Rey, Québec, QC et le cri des oies sauvages p. 35, Angèle Lux, Val-des-Monts, QC Trois jours que les feuilles du magnolia En avril 2013, Berger et Montreuil récidivent tombent— en publiant une deuxième anthologie, nuages Trois jours d’octobre.61 Cette fois-ci, 39 poètes, dont 28 que j’attends ton texto femmes, ont été sélectionnés offrant 61 tankas p. 40.1, Lydia Padellec, FR dont près de 85% sont inédits. Notons deux faits: plusieurs noms sont nouveaux dans la En avril 2012, une nouvelle petite maison communauté active du tanka francophone; près d’édition, sise dans la capitale fédérale, publie de la moitié des contributions, autres que franco- une anthologie exclusivement canadienne, canadiennes, vient de l’Europe notamment l’estuaire entre nos doutes—tankas de chez nous. Les France, Belgique, Suisse, Roumanie. responsables, Maxianne Berger (née 1949) et Mike Montreuil, (né 1958) abritent 25 poètes pour tous ces nuages (dont 20 femmes) du Canada français offrant 40 mes deux épaules seront-elles tankas dont 75% sont inédits.59 assez solides? le vent retourne les corbeaux comme des ombres chinoises

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 73 p. 61, Monique Leroux Serres, FR. tenir à Montréal, berceau du tanka écrit en français au Canada. tout le jardin fleure Si l’idée d’un symposium62 faisait son les belles saisons d’autrefois chemin, on pourrait tenter de définir le tanka quand tu étais là— hors du Japon. S’agit-il, pour la francophonie, près de ta photo j’arrange d’un poème bref, d’un quintil, d’un tableautin? les roses les plus rouges Combien de syllabes le tanka devrait-il contenir p. 43, Frans Terryn, BEL. 31 ou osciller entre 21 et 31? Les cinq vers non rimés sont-ils conçus en phrases complètes ou en se croit-il aimé fragments formant un tout? Outre la vue, lui aussi? comment et pourquoi exploiter les autres sens? vieux chêne que visitent Quelle différence y a-t-il entre expliquer un parfois les oiseaux évènement, décrire une situation et observer une avant de repartir scène? Le quotidien peut-il aspirer à l’universel? p. 25, Vincent Hoarau, FR. Comment transmettre une émotion sans être mélodramatique? L’art de la suggestion ou du sur mon zafu non-dit s’apprend-il? La notion de la tout n’est qu’illusion juxtaposition d’une scène de la nature à un dehors sentiment profond est-elle surannée? La un marteau-piqueur francophonie voudrait-elle convenir de balises me rappelle que j’existe minimales; le Japon pourrait-il s’en p. 70, Louise Vachon, Rimouski, QC accommoder? Récemment, des poètes de tanka semblent vouloir être lus et publiés en édition la violette bilingue. Le jeu en vaut-il la chandelle; si oui, rempotée pour qui?63 Que de questions. Saurons-nous y dans mes mains répondre? le poids d’un nouveau départ © Janick Belleau, Canada, novembre 2013 p. 51, Huguette Ducharme, St-Pie, QC Janick Belleau réside près de Montréal (Canada). À son actif: publication de cinq recueils Du tanka: ici maintenant et demain personnels et codirection/direction de cinq ouvrages Rappelons-nous qu’en 2010, la première collectifs. Reliés au tanka et au haïku, et souvent anthologie du tanka francophone contenait 47 bilingues, ses articles de fond (au Canada) et ses poètes. Dans les trois ouvrages collectifs et communications (en France, au Canada, au Japon) anthologies de 2011, 2012 et 2013, on compte 52 portent sur l’écriture de femmes poètes. nouveaux noms. On se trouve donc, en octobre Notes 2013, avec un total de 99 poètes (50-50 Canada/ 1 Recueil de dix mille feuilles, le plus ancien recueil de Europe) écrivant du tanka en français. Peut-être poésies japonaises compilé au cours du VIIe siècle ce nombre augmentera-t-il d’ici un ou deux ans. 2 Compilation des meilleurs poèmes écrits entre En effet, une revue électronique francophone, les VIIIe et XIIe siècles faite par l’homme de lettres, Cirrus, doit voir le jour en février 2014. Berger et Fujiwara no Teika (1163-1241). De cent poètes un poème Montreuil sont aux commandes. De son côté, (traduction, René Sieffert, 1993); calligraphie de Sōryū Patrick Simon a lancé un appel à textes pour Uésugi; Publications Orientalistes de France (POF), promouvoir la publication de sa deuxième 2008. anthologie (français/japonais); date prévue de 3 Léon de Rosny. Paris, Maisonneuve et Cie parution: printemps 2015. Peut-être que toute éditeurs, 1871. Version numérique gratuite http:// cette activité autour du tanka suscitera-t-elle le books.google.fr/books? désir de planifier un symposium qui pourrait se id=qHItAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1&hl=fr&source=gbs_to c_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 74 4 Notons l’épellation française qui se rapproche 25 On me pardonnera de ne pas m’attarder aux de la prononciation japonaise. trois recueils de Renée Gandolphe de Neuville, 5 De Rosny, ibid., Introduction, p. XV poétesse à la voix indépendante, contemporaine de 6 Ibid., p. XVII Jehanne Grandjean: Pétales envolés—suite de haïkaï et de 7 Judith Gautier. Gravé et imprimé par Charles tanka; Hazan, Paris, 1938. Sur la natte de riz; Lucien Gillot, Paris, 1885. Date de la publication non Pinneberg, Arcachon, 1940. Et . . . un shamisen indiquée dans le livre; il faut se fier au catalogue de la chantait . . . ; Lucien Pinneberg, Arcachon, 1942. Peu Bibliothèque nationale de France de renseignements sur son compte sont disponibles sur 8 Recueil de poèmes anciens et modernes. Ki no la Toile. Les coordonnées et les faits touchant à sa vie Tsurayuki (872?-946?) a été l’âme de cette sont trop ténus ou contradictoires pour que j’en fasse compilation; il a jeté les bases du waka dans sa longue préface de cette première anthologie impériale, état ici. 26 Chipot, ibid., p. 135 compilée entre 905 et 913. Il est l’un des deux piliers 27 du waka classique; le second fut Fujiwara no Teika Jehanne Grandjean. Sakura—jonchée de tankas (1162-1241), célèbre pour ses divers traités sur (Fleurs de cerisier), 1954. Inscription sous la photo de l’excellence en poésie. la poétesse 9 Ponctuation et lettres majuscules originales 28 Ibid. La préface et les illustrations sont signées respectées pour chacun des poèmes cités. par Nagashima; la préface est suivie de «Notes de 10 Kikou Yamata. Paris, Le Divan, septième l’auteur». Le recueil contient 145 poèmes courts. Une édition en japonais paraît à Tokyo en 1959. ouvrage de la collection Les soirées du Divan, 1924. 29 158 pages. Les exemplaires sont numérotés. Jehanne Grandjean. (Chrysanthème blanc). La 11 Kikou Yamata. Paris, Plon, cinquième ouvrage présentation et les illustrations sont de Nagashima. Le recueil contient 147 poèmes courts. de la collection Feux croisés—Âmes et terres 30 étrangères, 1928. 317 pages. Les exemplaires sont Source: département Littérature et Art de la numérotés. Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)—Sakura est 12 Arthur Waley. The Tale of Genji en six tomes publié aux Éditions Gerbert à Aurillac. Shiragiku entre 1925 et 1933; les neuf premiers chapitres (réédité en 1966; texte français et traduction japonaise traduits par Kikou Yamata sont la somme totale du en regard) et L’Art du tanka sont publiés par l’ÉIT, premier tome. «éditeur scientifique». 31 13 Le site http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/ Grandjean. Sakura. Extrait des «Notes de bloch.html propose des poèmes et des articles de l’auteur» Bloch. 32 Source: Société des Gens de Lettres de France 14 http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/ (SGDL) à Paris. Échange de courriels en 2009. lepampre.html (voir le no 41 de la bibliographie de 33 André Duhaime & Dorothy Howard René Maublanc et la section XIX pour lire 3 tankas (codirection). Haïku Anthologie canadienne/Canadian de Bloch) Anthology. Hull, QC, Asticou, 1985; anthologie 15 Parution dans le no 1506 en date du 14 bilingue (français/anglais) et partiellement trilingue novembre 1911, http://www.journaux- (pour les haïkus des poètes japonais). Précédée de collection.com/fiche.php?id=443790 deux préfaces bilingues: Historique du haïku en anglais en 16 Dominique Chipot. Le Livre du tanka francophone, Amérique du Nord par Elizabeth Searle Lamb et Histoire Mascouche, Du tanka francophone, 2011; p. 30 du haïku en français: la France et le Québec par Bernadette 17 Jean-Aubert Loranger. Montréal, L. Ad. Guilmette. p. 12 Morissette, 1922 34 André Duhaime. Chevaucher la lune: anthologie du 18 Jean-Aubert Loranger, Les Atmosphères suivi de haïku contemporain en français; Ottawa, ON., 2001, p. 17 Poëmes. Textes choisis et Avant-propos par Gilles 35 Site de Duhaime: http://pages.infinit.net/ Marcotte, Montréal, HMH, 1970; p. 12 haiku/ 19 Ibid., p. 14 36 Tawara Machi. Traduction par Jack Stamm. 20 Paul-Louis Couchoud. Paris, Calmann-Lévy, Kawade Bunko, 1988. Il existe aussi une deuxième 1916 traduction par Juliet Winters Carpenter. Japon, 21 Jean-Aubert Loranger. Les Atmosphères, Poëmes et Kōdansha International, 1989. autres textes, Textes choisis et présentés par Pierre 37 André Duhaime. St-Lambert, QC, Du Noroît, Ouellet, Montréal, Orphée/La Différence, 1992; p. 14 22 1990; illustrations de Réal Calder. Réédition sous le http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/nrf.html titre D’hier et de toujours. Ottawa, ON., David, 2003. Sur 23 Loranger par Gilles Marcotte, p. 80 24 Ibid., p. 101 les deux titres, l’auteur a repris ses droits. On peut lire le recueil entier sur: http://pages.infinit.net/haiku/

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 75 section Tanka; rubrique Autres tankas de André m’a permis de trouver dans quel ouvrage se trouve Duhaime. Les tankas cités sont tirés de ce recueil. cette traduction. Il s’agit de mono no aware, le sentiment 38 et 38b André Duhaime, sur son site: tiré de son des choses de Jacques Roubaud, Gallimard, NRF., 1970, article «Autour du haïku et du tanka—Pour découvrir certaines p. 232. Je remercie Carl Vanwelde de Bruxelles pour de nos racines en poésie» son aide inattendue. Lu sur son blogue http:// 39 Tawara Machi. Traduction du japonais par entrecafejournal.blogspot.ca/2012/05/sagesse-de-ki- no-tsurayuki.html Yves-Marie Allioux. Arles, Picquier, 2008 55 40 Micheline Beaudry & Janick Belleau Mention sur chaque quatrième couverture de (codirection). L’Érotique poème court/haïku; incluant 10 la revue dessins fripons de Line Michaud; Bruxelles, Biliki, 41 Janick Belleau. Regards de femmes—haïkus 2006. Les auteures ont repris leurs droits. francophones. Montréal, QC/Lyon, FR., 2008). 56 Micheline Beaudry. comme une étoile filante/like a Illustrations par différentes artistes dont la page shooting star; ON., Carleton Place, Bondi Studios, 2012. couverture par Martine Séguy Bruxelles, BEL. Traduction de l’avant-propos en anglais, Maxianne L’auteure a repris ses droits sur ce titre. Berger; traduction des tankas en anglais, Mike 42 M. Kei & co-directeurs, Perryville, Maryland, Montreuil; photo de la page couverture, Lise Robert et États-Unis, 2012 autres illustrations, Line Michaud. 43 Janick Belleau. Lire sur le site http:// 57 Ibid., p. i atlaspoetica.org/?page_id=599 58 André Duhaime & Hélène Leclerc, J’amour— 44 Janick Belleau. D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and Collectif de tankas, Québec, QC, Cornac, 2011; p. 12 et wings. Initialement publié aux ÉTF, 2010. Traduction quatrième couverture. Dessins rigolos de Marie Leviel. en anglais de l’historique: Maxianne Berger. Révision 59 Maxianne Berger & Mike Montreuil, l’estuaire des tankas en anglais: Claudia Coutu Radmore. entre nos doutes—tankas de chez nous. Illustrations de Line Illustrations: huit photos prises par l’auteure. Celle-ci a Michaud. Ottawa, ON. Des petits nuages, 2012 repris ses droits sur ce titre depuis novembre 2011. 60 Berger & Montreuil, ibid., p. 2 45 Ces Prix «constituent une reconnaissance de 61 Maxianne Berger & Mike Montreuil, nuages l’excellence littéraire d’auteurs canadiens qui écrivent d’octobre—anthologie de tankas. Quinze illustrations sur le Japon, sur des thèmes japonais ou sur des suibokuga (l’art du sumi-e) de Rebecca Cragg. Ottawa, thèmes qui favorisent la compréhension mutuelle entre ON., Des petits nuages, 2013 le Japon et le Canada. Les fonds de ces prix 62 Notons déjà un premier évènement proviennent des revenus de placement de la portion d’importance ayant eu lieu les 5 et 6 septembre 2013 du Fonds Japon-Canada réservée à la dotation, à de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique: Rencontre lyonnaise de perpétuité, d’un prix littéraire. Le montant de 20 000 la poésie japonaise ‘Tanka’ organisée par l’Association $ était disponible pour les prix de cette année.» Le Lyon-Japon en collaboration avec l’Université Lyon Conseil des arts du Canada administre ces Prix III et le Bureau consulaire du Japon à Lyon. Au http://www.canadacouncil.ca/fr/writing-and- programme, deux ateliers (l’un en japonais et l’autre publishing/news-room/news/2010/canada-japan- en français), cinq conférences et la 1ère édition d’un literary-awards-(2010) concours de tanka sur le thème de «la mer». Le jury 46 Patrick Simon (direction). Anthologie du Tanka francophone était composé des membres du Comité francophone. Toutes citations de cette section viennent de rédaction des ÉTF. Janick Belleau s’est mérité le de l’Introduction. Les tankas de divers auteurEs sont Deuxième Prix. Pour lire tous les tanka gagnants: aussi tirés de cet ouvrage. http://www.revue-tanka-francophone.com/ 47 Chipot, ibid., toutes citations de ce paragraphe actualite.html#Lyon-2013 viennent des pp. 155-156 63 Pour Belleau, voir note 44 et Beaudry, voir note 48 Ibid., p. 228 56. Pour Claudia Coutu Radmore, voir http:// 49 Sumie Terada. Figures poétiques japonaises; Paris, www.revue-tanka-francophone.com/editions/ Collège de France, 2004 edition_tanka_francophone.htm ; pour Terry Ann 50 Michel Vieillard-Baron, Fujiwara no Teika Carter, voir http://www.buschekbooks.com/ (1162-1241) et la motion d’excellence en poésie; Paris, hallelujah.htm et pour Luminita Suse, voir http:// Collège de France, 2001 www.luminitasuse.com/? 51 Chipot, ibid., pp. 235-236 citant Michel page=event&lang=en&eid=202 Vieillard-Baron 52 Revue du Tanka francophone, no 18, 2013, p. 53.3 53 Voir note 8 concernant Tsurayuki 54 Lire sur http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ki_no_Tsurayuki Une recherche plus approfondie

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 76 Tanka in French: Translated, Written and Published: 1871–2013 An Overview

Janick Belleau

Maxianne Berger, French-English Translator

This article, in six sections, deals with a few 1871 Si-ka-zen-yō—Anthologie japonaise, poésies literary personalities who, since 1871, translated, anciennes et modernes des Insulaires du Nippon [selected wrote or published tanka in French. For clarity, japanese and sino-japanese verse—Japanese the historical overview will approximate anthology, ancient and modern poems from the chronology. Writers and poets will be presented Japanese Islands], includes selections from such in terms of their noteworthy accomplishments in texts as the Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand the realm of Japanese-inspired poetry, and I will Leaves, c. 759) and the Hyakunin Isshū (One hundred on occasion provide my own impressions of their poets, one poem each).1 The translator’s Introduction work. Also cited are tanka I find especially provides the rules governing “outa” (French sp. of resonant. I will conclude with an eye to the “uta”) as well as waka/tanka, whether sung or future. chanted. The poem “must contain a complete idea within the thirty-one syllables that make up 1. Waka in translation: 1871–1928 its two lines: the first of seventeen syllables I could not begin this article without [5-7-5], with two caesuras; the second of fourteen mentioning the Japanese origins of syllables [7-7] with only one caesura” (p. xv). The contemporary tanka and its early days in France. first line, he writes, contains “an idea[,]” and the As recommended by Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), second “provides the dénouement or conclusion” (p. after 1898 the Japanese moved away from the xvii). If at first glance his approach seems eighth-century terms “ūta” and “waka” and somewhat adamantine, one must admire de instead began to say “tanka.” This new word Rosny’s scholarship and appreciate his having so caught on more slowly in the French-speaking generously shared his knowledge. world. For the record, in late-nineteenth- and 1.2 Next comes Judith Gautier (Paris, early-twentieth-century France, there were three France, 1845–1917). At the Exposition Universelle important forerunners of tanka. These literary [Third Paris World’s Fair] of 1878, Gautier met personalities introduced the Japanese form the Japanese painter Yamamoto Hōsui. A little through translations and adaptations. later, she was introduced to Kinmochi Saionji, 1.1 Léon de Rosny (Lille, France, 1837– member of the Japanese Emperor’s Privy 1914) was the first to publish a book of poems Council, who had come to learn about principles gathered from ancient Japanese writings. His of western democracy. Through the close

1 The best poems written between the eighth and twelfth centuries, compiled by literary scholar Fujiwara no Teika (1163-1241). One of the two pillars of classical waka, he is celebrated for his various writings about excellence in poetry. René Sieffert, trans. (1993): De cent poètes un poème. Calligraphy, Sōryū Uésugi. Aurillac, Fr.: Publications Orientalistes de France, 2008.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 77 collaboration of these three friends came the popular in France because of her passion for 1885 anthology Poëmes de la Libellule [Poems of the ikebana. Dragonfly].2 The statesman rendered literal French translations, and the author, Gautier, 2. Tanka written in the 1920s adapted these into waka. The eighty-eight poems, Tanka in France appeared after the Great from the Kokin-wakashū, are preceded by an War. Until recently, it was believed that Jean- excerpt from Ki no Tsurayuki’s famous preface.3 Richard Bloch (Poitou, France, 1884–1947) had Yamamoto provided illustrations. I have held this written the first with his haï-kaïs & outas in 1920.5 book in my own hands and have read it: it is In December, 1921, he followed with sixteen exquisite. The dedication (signed J.G.) from the brief poems called «tankas» in Les Cahiers idéalistes compiler to Mitsouda Komiosi provides a glimpse [The Idealists’ Notebooks]. of her own style. If the photo is a failure I give you flowers What will remain From your beloved islands. Of that sweet and dear countenance? With our tearful skies —A line in the sand, Can you recognise their hues An image in memory. And the perfume of their souls?4 (in Maublanc XIX)

Based on this inscription, it can be said that According to essayist Dominique Chipot (p. Judith Gautier is the first female literary 30), the first French poet to publish a tanka is personality to have written a waka in French, in Émile Lutz, winner of the “Asian poems” contest 6 rhyme [TN: in French, abaab] and of 31 syllables sponsored in 1911 by the arts journal Comoedia. (5-7-5-7-7). His winning poem follows the 31-syllable rhythm, 1.3 Kikou Yamata, a French woman of and it rhymes [TN: in French, ababa]. Japanese heritage (Lyon, France, 1897–1975), Underneath our oars produced two works involving tanka. The first, Shadow flowers and branches Sur des lèvres japonaises ([On Japanese Lips] 1924) Scissor the circles! anthologises her translations of texts dating from And here crossing into those the eight century on: legends, tales and short With their white lines are herons! poems (haiku and tanka, seven of these by (in Chipot p. 30) Yosano Akiko). The book opens with a letter- preface by the poet Paul Valéry. Yamata’s second From my humble perspective, would-be book is Le Roman de Genji (1928)—her translation classical contemporary tanka confines itself to a of the first nine chapters of the Genji Monogatari 31-syllable regularity (5-7-5-7-7). Poets who [The Tale of Genji] by Murasaki Shikibu. The prefer to write more freely choose the short-long- novelist-translator found inspiration in both the short-long-long formula for line length. In all ancient original text and the English version by cases, they compose in five lines. Two lines can Arthur Waley (her nine chapters corresponding flirt with end rhyme but, generally, it would be to his Vol. 1). Of note, flower arranging became preferable to have rhymes at the beginning or the

2 “1885,” not printed in the book, is taken on faith from the catalog of the Bliothèque nationale de France. 3 “Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times.” Ki no Tsurayuki (c.872–c. 945) was the soul of this compilation. The second pillar of classical waka, he set out its principles in his long preface to this first imperial anthology, compiled between 905 and 913. 4 All quoted poems retain original capitalization and punctuation. 5 Poems and articles by Jean-Richard Bloch can be found at http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/bloch.html 6Comoedia No 1506 (14 November, 1911). http://www.journaux-collection.com/fiche.php?id=443790

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 78 middle of a line. In French, assonance and Richard Bloch while in l’Ile-d’Aix, because Bloch alliteration, enveloping the poem with sound, are owned a “house in Poitou.”7 appreciated as well. In French there is minimal punctuation, and no capitals other than possibly Rain is falling on the roof: the first letter of the first word. Tanka requires My acoustic chamber is filling two parts. Usually the first shows a scene from With the sound of applause. nature or from the everyday, as perceived by the senses. The second part produces the poet’s As the day fades away, impression, intuition or sentiment as evoked by The lamp expands and reaches me. the scene. Ideally, the heart will convey universal (Loranger in Marcotte p. 80) themes such that readers can share in the poet’s I cannot read this brief poem by Loranger emotion, or even better, experience their own. without feeling the connection between youth In French Canada of the 1920s, the sole and sadness. Form is not followed, but tanka author interested in the “outa” was Jean-Aubert spirit is. I suspect that the poet toyed with the Loranger (Montréal, QC, 1896–1942). This required syllable count . . . whether through journalist, storyteller and poet is also considered nonconformity or to approximate the poems of Québec’s first “modernist.” In his second J.-R. Bloch. The topics in Loranger’s tanka collection, Poëmes (1922), the section called suggest that he wrote from dusk to dawn, when “Moments” contains thirty-one tanka “in the silence set him to traveling between two worlds, manner of the ancient Chinese poems—haikais here and elsewhere, and to expressing his moods. and outa.” These are grouped in strings of two or three poems. Midnight. The full measure reached. The writer closely followed “the The clock tells contemporary literary scene in Paris” (Marcotte All of time’s hours p. 12). We know he “disliked the classics and read Entrusted to it. only [Jules] Romains or the N.R.F” (Marcotte p. The clock strikes and counts its till. 14). The New French Review attracted vanguard (in Marcotte p. 101) poets who were enthusiastic about Japanese forms. One can suppose that Loranger, curious Could Loranger have sensed that his life about modern poets, would have read other would be short? That his hour of reckoning periodicals and recent publications before would strike early? That his career as a poet producing his own collection. Of these, one would end after this second book? might think of Paul-Louis Couchoud’s essay, Sages et Poètes d’Asie [Thinkers and Poets of Asia]. 3. The lone French file: 1948–19728 Loranger spent time in France, in the capital and Jehanne Grandjean (Paris, 1880–1982) and on l’Ile-d’Aix in Poitou-Charentes, between April Hisayoshi Nagashima (Tokyo, 1896–Paris, 1973), 13 and December 18, 1921 (Ouellet p. 14), and whose partnership was both professional and could have met and been influenced by Jean- marital (Chipot p. 135), gave French tanka its wings. In fact, the two devoted themselves to the

7 Jean-Richard Bloch’s poem, “Maison en Poitou” [House in Poitou], can be read at http://terebess.hu/english/ haiku/nrf.html 8 I must be forgiven for not spending time on Renée Gandolphe de Neuville, the independently-minded poetess who was a contemporary of Jehanne Grandjean. Her three books are: Pétales envolés—suite de haïkaï et de tanka ([Flight of Petals]; Paris: Hazan, 1938); Sur la natte de riz ([On the Braid of Rice]; Arcachon: Lucien Pinneberg, 1940); and Et . . . un shamisen chantait . . . ([And . . . A Shamisen Was Singing . . .]; Arcachon: Lucien Pinneberg, 1942). There is not much information about her on the web. The details and events surrounding her life are too minimal or contradictory to be dealt with here.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 79 poem with extraordinary energy and almost celestial”—in particular the birds and flowers of religious fervour. In 1948, Nagashima founded her private courtyard or in public gardens. the École internationale du tanka [International However in some tanka she does share intimate School of Tanka] in Paris, with Grandjean as his moments. right hand. October, 1953, saw the appearance of the Revue du tanka international [International On watch and all ears Tanka Review]. Grandjean served as general Trying to perceive the sounds manager and as editor-in-chief until the review’s Made by his footsteps . . . final issue in 1972. Without pause, my heart beating: In her spare time, the “creator of regular Hopes ever disappointed . . . tanka”9 (i.e. 31 syllables on five unrhymed lines) (Sakura p. 127) produced two collections of her own: Sakura, jonchée de tankas [Cherry Blossoms, A Spray of Given that Grandjean was born in 1880, and Tanka] in 1954, and Shiragiku, jonchée de tanka Sakura published in 1954, clearly a [White Chrysanthemums, A Spray of Tanka] in septuagenarian body sheltered a young woman’s 1964. Between these two books, 1957 saw the heart. Jehanne Grandjean died at the age of 102, appearance of her L’Art du tanka: Méthode pour la nine years after the death of her beloved. The composition du tanka, suivi de tankas inédits [The Art Grandjean-Nagashima’s bequeathed funds to the of Tanka: How to Compose Tanka; followed by Société des gens de lettres [French Learned Society] previously unpublished tanka]. which would enable its social aid commission to In her “author’s notes” to Sakura, Grandjean provide financial help to authors in need.10 affirms that, “tanka rests on a solid base: [. . .] nothing is imagined: it is the snapshot of a 4. Tanka published 1990 and 2009 sensory impression; [. . .] as well, following the 4.1 André Duhaime rhythm of heartbeats, it conveys every emotion it This resident of Gatineau, QC (b. Montréal carries. [. . .] In Japan they say that tanka is 1948), has always been at the forefront in poetry. written in blood: that is, that its words must come As early as 1985, in the bilingual Haïku Anthologie from the depths of the soul; and I should add canadienne/Canadian Anthology (co-edited with that proper composition is reached through Dorothy Howard), the Foreword states that some continuous observation and contemplation of poets respect “traditional rules” and others are things earthly and the celestial.” “more modern and experimental” (p. 11). And again, in 2001, what Duhaime states The Breton woman about haiku in his Foreword to Chevaucher la lune Sings as she rocks her small boy, [Straddling the Moon], could apply to tanka: Son of a sailor; "experts regularly express serious doubts about But the noise that surrounds her haiku written in languages other than Japanese Is not the sound of the sea . . . [as] poets try to explore and experiment . . .” (p. (Sakura p. 31) 17). Even today he has a different approach to faceting these two jewels from the Japanese Some contemporary tanka poets overlook the archipelago—as would attest his web site.11 writings of this advocate of regular tanka. They Duhaime, whom I clearly see as the original reproach her for the “continuous observation and promoter of tanka in French Canada, is the first contemplation of things earthly and the to have written a complete book of tanka. After

9 Inscription under Grandjean’s photo in Sakura. 10 Société des gens de lettres de France. Personal correspondence, 2009. See Belleau’s historical overview, “Tanka by women since the ninth century,” D’âmes et d’ailes /of souls and wings p. 34, and notes 38 and 39 p. 38. 11 http://pages.infinit.net/haiku/

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 80 having read Tawara Machi’s (b. 1962) sarada 5. Two homes for tanka since 2007 kinenbi in English translation (Salad Anniversary), he 5.1 Patrick Simon produced his own first book in 1990, Traces d’hier This Franco-Québécois (b. Metz, France, [Traces of Yesterday]. 1953; now domiciled in Mascouche, QC) became The author breaks away from form and from so enamoured of this poem that in 2007 he delicate phraseology. For him, it’s a matter of founded the Revue du Tanka francophone [The “not escaping into poetic dreaminess, but rather French-language tanka review]. Such a literary to penetrate what is real. Beauty and truth are journal had not existed since the France-based not always pretty” (“Autour” p. 2). As to the spirit Revue de tanka international ceased publication in of tanka, he agrees that it is a lyrical poem 1972. As of the spring of 2014, the RTF will have composed of a triplet and a couplet, “this second reached its twenty-first issue. Published three part being a reply, or a rejoinder to the first. [. . .] times a year, the back cover of every issue The couplet is usually the expression of an describes it as “a creative space for writing and emotion (or a comment) evoked by something discussing tanka.” Aside from the editorial, there concrete (or by the here and now) stated in the are four regular sections: 1, History and evolution triplet” (“Autour” p. 14). of tanka; 2, Tanka by poets today (selected blind His poems, like those of Tawara in sarada by a jury of poets from both France and kinenbi, are as intimate and as honest as waka Québec); 3, Renga, tan-renga and tanka-prose; 4, composed in the Imperial Court of the past— Presentations of books and of authors, through only the vocabulary and the tone are different. book reviews and reports. The theme he explores, that of marital Indefatigable lover of tanka, in 2008 Patrick separation, speaks to the intelligence of the heart. Simon founded the éditions du Tanka francophone Certain breaks in form, as I see it, can be (ÉTF [the French-language tanka press]). As of permitted in tanka, decidedly contemporary, as November, 2013, eighteen books have appeared long as the spirit is respected. —twelve by a solo poet (of whom three women), and three by two authors. Of the one-poet books, first one side then the other four are dual-language editions, three of these the oscillations being French-English—Belleau (March, 2010), of the fan Claudia Coutu Radmore (May, 2010) and have I bungled my life Alhama Garcia (June, 2013). The press publishes did I do it on purpose both in print and in digital formats (e-pub and (Traces d’hier p. 42) PDF). The press’s catalog includes the Anthologie du Tanka francophone [Anthology of French- to drink beer language tanka], discussed below. and to shout more loudly As to his own poems, Simon endorses the than the swollen river rhythms of five- and seven-syllable lines. He hands move on therefore prefers to compose regular tanka, as memories remain had Jehanne Grandjean, counting out thirty-one (Traces d’hier p. 57) syllables. Here are two of his, taken from his anthology. 4.2 Duhaime and others The first decade of the twenty-first century from bridge to island saw tanka take off in Québec. Three authors raspberries graze the water published books featuring a mix of tanka and so extolled in song haiku: Janick Belleau’s Humeur/Sensibility/Alma sensitive to your presence ([Mood/Sensibility/Soul]; 2003); Patrick Simon’s like silk over your body (p. 90) À deux pas de moi ([Two steps away from me]; 2006); and Duhaime’s Séjours ([Sojourns]; 2009).

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 81 Orangey flashes shower on leaves it is the sun going down carried away by the wind on the glass tower I would not mind by the time I turn around a never-ending season I find myself at twilight (p. 91) the taste of you on my lips (p. 70)

5.2 Janick Belleau 5.3 French-language tanka As the author of this article on tanka in anthologised French, it behooves me to be modest about my Also in March, 2010, editor and publisher own contributions to poetry of Japanese origin. Patrick Simon opened the anthology season with Janick Belleau (b. Montréal, QC, 1946) is the previously mentioned Anthologie du Tanka involved in both haiku and tanka. She has edited francophone—the very first to be dedicated to three haiku anthologies, including Regards de contemporary tanka in French. His Introduction femmes—haïkus francophones [Women’s Views— sets the beginnings of French interest in tanka to French-Language haiku] which she opens with an the second half of the nineteenth century. The overview of French haiku written by women. As decline of the shōguns and the restoration of the for tanka, she has regularly contributed both emperor permitted Japan to open itself to the feature articles and poems to the RTF since its West. As of then, works of art showed up at so- founding in 2007. She was on M. Kei’s editorial called Universal Exhibitions in both London and team for Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 4 Paris. It was primarily due to these that Japanism (2012). That same year, she edited a special emerged in the salons where the Impressionists feature, “Chiaroscuro—25 Lesbian, Gay, gathered, charmed as they were by Japanese Bisexual, and Transgender Tanka,” for M. Kei’s prints. The influence of this pictorial movement journal, Atlas Poetica. One of her five poetry extended to literature. Paul Verlaine, in his 1866 collections is D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and wings Poèmes saturniens [Poems Under Saturn], was already (March, 2010). shaping “poems with five- and seven-syllable D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and wings marked the rhythms” depicting landscapes, impressions, first time in nearly half-century that a woman states of mind. In doing this, the poet touched (since Jehanne Grandjean) produced a complete upon “the aesthetics of classical Japanese poetry.” collection of tanka in French—one which is also Stéphane Mallarmé carried on with the bilingual. In its ninety-one brief poems, “[w]ith “research by poets such as Verlaine and sensitivity, tenderness and sincerity, the author Rimbaud, concerning rhythm, odd numbers of shares a Life’s journey similar to that of many lines, and in particular the 5-and 7-syllable lines contemporary women . . .” (back cover). She found” in tanka (Simon pp. 7-8 passim). The begins the book with an historical overview of anthologist’s comments move along to the “Tanka by women since the ninth century”. The author/translator Judith Gautier, and to poets book earned Belleau the 2010 Canada-Japan such as Jean-Richard Bloch, Jean-Aubert Literary Award.12 Loranger and the poetess Jehanne Grandjean. Finally, the publisher explains that the selection committee favoured “poems which expressed the most intense emotions with musicality, lightness and reserve, all the while respecting the tanka form” (p. 16). Of the forty-

12 These awards “recognize literary excellence by Canadian authors writing on Japan, Japanese themes or themes that promote mutual understanding between Japan and Canada. The funds for these awards come from the Japan- Canada Fund endowment dedicated to a literary award. The amount of $20,000 was available for this year’s award.” These awards are administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. http://canadacouncil.ca/en/writing- and-publishing/news-room/news/2010/canada-japan-literary-awards-%282010%29

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 82 seven poets featured, twenty-one are from No fear of being caught Canada, twenty-two from France, and there are alone in the black night as many women as men. Of the 854 poems wind in my hair submitted, the selection committee chose 207, hands open and arms outstretched most of these previously unpublished. I embrace the moon

You steal a kiss ~André Vézina, Québec City, QC (p. 110) I grab your collar and hug you so gently 5.4 Dominique Chipot two butterflies on a branch Also from the ÉTF press, one of its flagship sway with the breeze books appeared in December, 2011: the long- awaited study by France’s Dominique Chipot (b. ~Jessica Tremblay, Vancouver, BC (p. 94) 1958), Le livre du Tanka francophone [Book of French-Language Tanka]. Chipot traces the A fragile sampan history of the poem in the French-speaking appears in the muddy waters world, from the nineteenth century through to Mekong, oh Mekong! today. the toothless smile of An extremely well-researched book, the the woman selling fruit sources are diverse, and the footnotes generous. The author meticulously travels backwards in ~Patrick Faucher, France (p. 53) time, and his love of both research and Japan comes through on every page. Time enough to look Chipot organises his study into five sections: the space that’s growing rounder 1. The first tanka in French; 2. The school and half sun half moon the International Tanka Review (followed by two children playing hopscotch profiles of the French and Japanese colleagues, drawing the day at night time Jehanne Grandjean and Hisayoshi Nagashima); 3. The art of tanka in French; 4. Of poetic ~Jean Dorval, Québec City, QC (p. 40) genius, the rhetoric of waka; 5. Bibliography. We should spend time on the instructional Pursued by wolves aspects of sections 3 and 4. In section 3, the on the roads of their exodus essayist analyses tanka through the lenses thousands of people. formulated by Nagashima and endorsed by the little girl’s lips are tinged Grandjean, “form, subject and spirit.” Form the colour of blueberries determines “rhythm, concision and completeness.” Topic requires “simplicity, reality ~Danièle Duteil, France (p. 52) and precision.” Spirit demands “sincerity, sensitivity and suggestiveness” (pp. 155-6 passim). The chrome motorcycle The author delves deeply into articles by outfitted in leather Nagashima and Grandjean in the Revue du tanka headed for adventure international of 1953 through 1972, and in two saddle bags Grandjean’s L’Art du tanka of 1957. As I see it, filled with wind . . . these sources are most appropriate because, in effect, the roots of tanka in French took hold ~Nanikooo Tsu, Cantley, QC (p. 102) within those pages. In section 4, Chipot pays “homage to Japanese poetic genius” by explaining writing techniques “specific” to Japanese poetry. (p. 228)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 83 He explains the function of certain words by build a nest under different skies. This citing transliterated Japanese poems and their multiplication of venues favours the development French translations, either by Sumie Terada or by of tanka and can only be encouraged. Michel Vieillard-Baron. One of these techniques, for example, is honka-dori. Chipot describes the 6.1 Micheline Beaudry process by quoting Vieillard-Baron. “[A] poet In the haiku universe, Micheline Beaudry (b. borrows elements from an ancient poem in order Montréal, QC, 1942) participated in the to set up ‘a play of resonances between the two founding, in 2003, of the Association francophone de poems. [§] To succeed, the poem behind the haïku ([the Association for French-Language allusion must be clearly identifiable; any unclear Haiku,] and its quarterly journal, Gong. In 2006, use would be deemed a case of theft’” (pp. with Belleau, she co-edited the anthology 235-6). L’Érotique poème court/haïku [The brief erotic This next poem, from the RTF (18 [Feb. poem] which was short-listed for the Belgian 2013]), shows the technique’s successful use. reading public’s award, Prix Gros Sel. In the skies of tanka, Beaudry was closely involved with the Morning of love RTF (writing feature articles and participating in well after the alarm clock the selection committee) from its inception in we caress and kiss 2007 through 2011. In May, 2012, her first tanka though not tired of each other collection was published in the country’s two still we had to part official languages, comme une étoile filante/like a shooting star. ~Michel Betting, France (p. 53) In her foreword, the author gives a chronological account of poets who wrote about The final lines of this contemporary tanka Love—from Japan’s classical period (the monks are borrowed from a waka by Ki no Tsurayuki: Saigyō and Ryōkan, and the nun Teishin), its “Musubu te no/ Shizuku ni nigoru/ Yama no i no/ modern period (Yosano Akiko), and Akade mo hito ni/ Wakarenuru kana.” “Water contemporary (Tawara Machi and Mayu). She dripping from my hands/ Disturbs the clarity/ then follows with Québec poets (Loranger, Of the mountain well,/ Though not tired of each Duhaime, Belleau) who wrote or who still write other/ Still we had to part[.]”13 about this timeless theme. The honka-dori is easily transposable to a The author manoeuvres easily in the poetics culture other than Japanese. Authors today, for of tanka which, she explains, “calls for sensory their own poems, can borrow a phrase writing and supreme mastery of the unstated” (p. (preferably a single line) from their cultural xi). As such, she lets readers wander through a canon. For readers to understand that this is a world of imagination, their own as well as hers. compliment and not plagiarism, poets must, as has done Michel Betting, italicise the borrowed willow plantation text (or use a different font), and indicate the the solemn chartreuse name of the honoured writer. of dusk I leave my body 6. Tanka published extra muros to touch another life (p. 72) It appears that Patrick Simon’s successful initiatives gave poets writing in French a desire This reader has the impression the book, for tanka, either to fly with their own wings, or to with its seventy-seven tanka, is structured

13 Ki no Tsurayuki, translation by Jacques Roubaud in his mono no aware, le sentiment des choses [the sentiment of things], Gallimard, NRF: 1970. p. 232. I am grateful to Vanwelde of Brussels for his serendipitous blog entry. http://entrecafejournal.blogspot.ca/2012/05/sagesse-de-ki-no-tsurayuki.html

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 84 according to the author’s memories, as if the poet For three days wants the reading eye to wander with her the magnolia’s leaves through the partially open gate of her secret have been falling— garden. Are we ever alone on the path of dreams Three days I’ve waited or in memory’s park? Can we ever escape the for your text message regret of having to leave life behind? ~Lydia Padellec, France, (p. 40) close to the water I noticed In April of 2012, a new small press, located the cemetery’s large trees in the federal capital, published a wholly is it there, the final shadow Canadian anthology, l’estuaire entre nos doutes— the eternal rustling? (p. 60) tankas de chez nous [the estuary between our doubts —tanka from home]. Those in charge, 6.2. More anthologies Montrealer Maxianne Berger (b. 1949) and A year after Patrick Simon’s Anthologie du Ottawan Mike Montreuil (b. 1958), have given a Tanka francophone, other anthologists followed. home to forty tanka by twenty-five poets from April, 2011, saw the launch in Québec’s capital French Canada (twenty of whom are women). of J’amour [I’llove], which gathers sixty-five tanka Three quarters of the poems are previously by thirty-two authors (of whom twenty-one unpublished. women) from French Canada and from France. In their foreword, Berger and Montreuil The editors, Duhaime and Hélène Leclerc (b. provide readers with their vision of tanka. “You 1972), state in their preface that they “sought to will notice that nearly all these ‘tanka from home’ give a contemporary view of love, especially the have fewer than 31 syllables [. . .] To add more sort that young people might experience.” These syllables would sustain [. . .] the risk of saying too would “recognise their own emotions, their much. Because our goal is to spotlight the brief questions, their doubts, and would surely find and allusive essence of tanka, we have selected inspiration themselves” (p. 12 and back cover). poems which give a voice to the white space around them. It is now up to readers to make i saw her that white space talk” (p. i). the blonde of my dreams in the hallway perfect circles surrounded by of the spider’s web— the football team autumn’s blonde light slides ~Mike Montreuil, Ottawa, ON (p. 16) into my childhood memories

He hurries ~Monika Thoma-Petit, Montréal, QC (p. 28) A rose in his hand Towards someone else September His gaze goes through me bursts forth in silence But doesn’t see me so deep your plum gaze ~Geneviève Rey, Québec City, QC (p. 25) I will take you gently

~Claude Drouin, Laval, QC (p. 27)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 85 a glass of brandy on my zafu as at every anniversary all is illusion his yellowed letter outside the memory of an embrace a woodpecker and the call of wild geese reminds me I exist

~Angèle Lux, Val-des-Monts, QC (p. 35) ~Louise Vachon, Rimouski, QC (p. 70)

In April, 2013, Berger and Montreuil the violet produced a second anthology, nuages d’octobre repotted [October clouds]. This one contains 61 tanka by in my hands 39 poets (of these, 28 are women; and nearly the weight 85% of the poems, not previously published). of a fresh start Two details are worthy of mention: several of the ~Huguette Ducharme, St-Pie, QC (p. 51) authors are new to the French-language tanka community; and nearly half of the contributors, Tanka: here now and tomorrow those not from French Canada, are from Europe As previously stated, in 2010 the first French- —France, Belgium, Switzerland and Romania. language tanka anthology included forty-seven poets. In the three anthologies that of 2011, 2012 for all these clouds and 2013, there are fifty-two new names. All told, will my shoulders be as of October, 2013, there are ninety-nine poets strong enough? (half each Canada and Europe) writing tanka in crows turn over in the wind French. This number could increase over the like Chinese shadow puppets next two years. A new web-based journal for tanka in French, Cirrus, directed by Montreuil ~Monique Leroux Serres, France (p. 61) and Berger, will be launched in February, 2014. Meanwhile, Patrick Simon has just put out a call the whole garden wafts for submissions for his second anthology (French of lovely summers past and Japanese), scheduled for spring, 2015. when you were there— Perhaps all this activity will lead to planning a next to your photo I arrange tanka symposium that could take place in the reddest of roses Montréal, the cradle of tanka written in French. If the idea of a symposium14 catches on, it ~Frans Terryn, Belgium (p. 43) would be possible to try to define tanka outside of Japan. For the French-speaking world, would it could it too be a brief poem, a five-line poem, a little picture? believe itself loved? How many syllables should be used to compose a old oak tanka: 31 or somewhere between 21 and 31? the birds sometimes visit Should the five unrhymed lines form complete before flying off again sentences, or should they be fragments that form a whole? Beyond vision, how and why should ~Vincent Hoarau, France (p. 25)

14 I note that a first such event took place September 5–6, 2013, across the Atlantic: the Lyon Meeting for Japanese Tanka Poetry organised by the Lyon-Japan association in collaboration with University Lyon 3 and the office of the Japanese consulate in Lyon. Scheduled activities included two workshops (one Japanese, one French), five presentations, and the first installment of a tanka contest, on the theme of “the sea.” ÉTF editors made up the French jury. The second prize was awarded to Janick Belleau. To read the winners’ tanka: http://www.revue- tanka-francophone.com/actualite.html#Lyon-2013

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 86 other senses be called upon? What are the Montréal, QC: Éd. Adage/Lyon, FR: Association differences between explaining an event, francophone de haïku, 2008). Rights reverted. Berger, Maxianne and Mike Montreuil. l’estuaire entre nos describing a situation and observing a scene? Can doutes—tankas de chez nous. Illustrations, Line Michaud. the everyday aspire to being universal? How can Ottawa, ON: Des petits nuages, 2012. an emotion be conveyed without melodrama? Berger, Maxianne and Mike Montreuil. nuages d’octobre— anthologie de tankas. Suibokuga artist, Rebecca Cragg. Can one learn the art of suggestion and the Ottawa, ON : Des petits nuages, 2013. unstated? Is the notion of juxtaposing a scene Chipot, Dominique. Le livre du Tanka francophone. Mascouche from nature with some deep feeling outdated? QC: ÉTF, 2011 Couchoud, Paul-Louis. Sages et Poètes d’Asie. Paris: Calmann- Would poets writing in French agree on minimal Lévy, 1916. requirements, and would these be acceptable to de Rosny, Léon. Si-ka-zen-yō—Anthologie japonaise, poésies Japan? Recently, tanka poets seem to want to be anciennes et modernes des Insulaires du Nippon. Paris: published and read in bilingual editions.15 Is this Maisonneuve et Cie éditeurs, 1871. Available at http:// archive.org/details/anthologiejapon00rosngoog worth the time and effort, and if so, for whom? Duhaime, André. “Autour du haïku et du tanka—Pour For such questions, could there be answers? découvrir certaines de nos racines en poésie” [Concerning haiku and tanka; to discover some of our poetry’s roots]. 2009. Web. http:// ©Janick Belleau, Canada, November pages.infinit.net/haiku/HAIKUetTANKA.pdf 2013 Duhaime, André, ed. Chevaucher la lune : anthologie du haïku contemporain en français. (Ottawa ON: David, 2001). Janick Belleau lives near Montreal, Canada. She Duhaime, André. Traces d’hier. Illustrations, Réal Calder. St- published five personal collections and directed/co-directed Lambert, QC: Du Noroît, 1990. Republished as D’hier five collective works. Her French and English feature articles et de toujours [Of yesterday and forever]. Ottawa, ON: (in Canada) and talks (in France, Canada, Japan) David, 2003. Rights reverted. Available at http:// concentrate on the writing of women poets. pages.infinit.net/haiku/tanka.htm#arrow Duhaime, André & Hélène Leclerc, J’amour—Collectif de Maxianne Berger, poet and literary translator, is tankas. Humourous illustrations, Marie Leviel. Québec, active in both the French and the English haiku and tanka QC: Cornac, 2011. communities in Montreal and beyond. Her writing Gautier, Judith, ed. Poëmes de la Libellule. Paris: Charles Gillot, meanders between Japanese forms and OuLiPo constraints, c.1885. and she is among those featured in Language Matters: Interviews Grandjean, Jehanne. Sakura, jonchée de tankas [Cherry with 22 Quebec Poets (Signature, 2013). The author of two Blossoms, A Spray of Tanka]. Aurillac, France: Éd. poetry collections, she has also co-edited one haiku Gerbert, 1954. anthology in English and two tanka anthologies in French. Grandjean, Jehanne. Shiragiku, jonchée de tanka. Preface and illustrations, Nagashima. Paris: École internationale du Works Cited tanka, “Scientific publisher,” 1964. The book contains 147 brief poems. Republished with Japanese Beaudry, Micheline. comme une étoile filante/ like a shooting star. translations on facing pages. Beppu: Yakumo tankakai, Two-language edition, Mike Montreuil, translator. 1966. Maxianne Berger, translator of foreword. Cover image, Grandjean, Jehanne. L’Art du tanka. Paris: ÉIT, “Scientific Lise Robert. Illustrations, Line Michaud. Carleton publisher,” 1957. Place, ON: Bondi Studios, 2012. Howard, Dorothy & André Duhaime, editors. Haïku, Beaudry, Micheline & Janick Belleau, eds. L’Érotique poème Anthologie canadienne /Canadian Anthology. Hull, QC: court/haïku. Saucy illustrations, Line Michaud. Brussels, Asticou, 1985. Bilingual, French-English (trilingual for Belgium: Biliki, 2006. Rights reverted. haiku by Japanese poets). Both prefaces are presented Belleau, Janick. “Chiaroscuro—25 LGBT Tanka.” Atlas in English and French: “Historical Notes on Haiku in Poetica (Aug. 2012). Web. http://atlaspoetica.org/? English in North America,” by Elizabeth Searle Lamb, page_id=599 and “Historical Notes on Haiku in French: France and Belleau, Janick. D’âmes et d’ailes/of souls and wings. Two- Québec” by Bernadette Guilmette. language edition. Trans. of historical essay, Maxianne Kei, M. and eds. Tak e Fiv e. Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 4. Berger. Rev. of the poet’s tanka in English, Claudia Perryville, MD: Keibooks, 2012. Coutu Radmore. Illustrations: 8 photos by the author. Loranger, Jean-Aubert. Poëmes. Montréal: L. Ad. Morissette, Mascouche, QC: ÉTF, 2010. Rights reverted 2011. 1922. PDF at http://beq.ebooksgratuits.com/pdf/ Belleau, Janick, ed. Regards de femmes—haïkus francophones. Loranger-poemes.pdf Various illustrators. Cover, Martine Séguy, Brussels.

15 Belleau (2010); Beaudry (2012); Claudia Coutu-Radmore,Your Hands Discover Me/Tes mains me découvrent. Mike Montreuil, trans. (ÉTF, 2010); Terry Ann Carter, Hallelujah: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka Montreuil, trans. (BuschekBooks, 2012); Luminita Suse, A Thousand Fireflies/Mille lucioles. Montreuil, trans. (petits nuages, 2012).

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 87 Marcotte, Gilles. His ed., Les Atmosphères suivi de Poëmes by friends, poets, strangers, all are captured in the Jean-Aubert Loranger. Montréal: HMH, 1970 ink drawing words of a master poet. Maublanc, René.“Le Haïkaï Français Bibliographie et Anthologie,” Le pampre, no. 10/11, 1923, pp. 1-62. Jean- Richard Bloch, “bibliography” 41, “anthology” XIX. all my sister noticed http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/lepampre.html was the bruise I brought from Japan Ouellet, Pierre. His ed., Les Atmosphères, Poëmes et autres textes, under my left eye, by Jean-Aubert Loranger. Montréal: Orphée/La Différence, 1992. her prolonged silence Simon, Patrick, ed. Anthologie du Tanka francophone. brought me another one Mascouche, QC: ÉTF, 2010. Tawara, Machi. Salad Anniversary. Jack Stamm, trans. Tokyo: Starkly moving strings about his sister, his Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1988. Juliet Winters Carpenter, trans. Kōdansha International, 1989. soulmate, his house, and his faith illuminate a life L’Anniversaire de la salade, Yves-Marie Allioux, trans. lit by the flame of a wavering candle. The tanka Arles: Picquier, 2008. poems contained in this book are pure Goldstein Terada, Sumie. Figures poétiques japonaises [Japanese poetic tropes]; Paris: Collège de France, 2004. with their unflinching view of life, their hypo- Vieillard-Baron, Michel. Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) et la and hypermetric lines challenging the strictures motion d’excellence en poésie [Teika and the notion of of tradition, and the honesty for which he is excellence in poetry]. Paris: Collège de France, 2001. famous. Waley, Arthur. The Tale of Genji in six volumes. 1925-1933. Yamata, Kikou. Sur des lèvres japonaises. Les soirées du divan 7. Paris: Le Divan, 1924. Numbered edition. 158 pages. love Yamata, Kikou. Le Roman de Genji. Feux croisés—Âmes et like a series of coin terres étrangères 5. Paris: Plon, 1928. Numbered tosses, edition. 317 pages. sometimes you win and win, sometimes you lose and lose

Goldstein has always been a poet grounded in the real and the present, so his spiritual contemplations, whether Zen or Judaism, are likewise rooted in the presentness of reality. However, in this book, he occasionally strays into other faiths and other symbols; sometimes reality Review: Journeys Far and Near : isn’t sufficient to support our souls. tanka roads a hand Reviewed by M. Kei reached out to me in dreams, Journeys Far and Near : tanka roads and I took it pulled by Sanford Goldstein its warmth to my lips Edmonton, AB, Canada: Inkling Press, 2013 paperback, 81 pp Always in the master’s poetry there has been ISBN 978-0-9869552-8-0 a thread of self-doubt. He has called himself a ‘wimp’ and ‘weak’; he has detailed the failures of Sanford Goldstein is the grand old man of an aging body; he has called upon Shakespeare tanka. Well-known as a translator, editor, scholar, and Melville to rouse his spirit and his poetry. and poet, he has collected tanka from his eighth Yet those of us who admire his poetry don’t think and ninth decades into this collection. The black he needs any literary props. The face that looks and white cover suits the somber mood of a man out at us from the cover photograph has the well aware of his mortality, and indeed the solidity of granite, capped with a statesman’s mortality of all whom he has known. Family, cloud of white hair.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 88 no Dada Tanka is a form and genre of poetry that is in my lines these forty years ancient in its origins. When set down in of five-liners, Giselle Maya’s ink, it is fresh as spring rain. wanting now a jackass head Or is it ink at all that writes these poems so to mutter Cyrano manifestos deftly, clearly, on our hearts? Who can know such things? Can there be such earthly ink? Regret comes to all of us, and more so to old men nearing their ends. At eighty-seven and in David Rice, editor of Ribbons, has written a declining health, he tells us in his end note, “My short Foreword, which begins: book is finished, perhaps the last one I will write.” The thread of hope is there, but it is weighed Individual tanka offer glimpses of a poet down with the gray burden of reality. Yet transforming the world into words. A Goldstein’s tanka are immortal, not only in collection of tanka published over a period of themselves, but in us. These “five lines down” are years, though, invites a reader to enter into not boxes into which to fit the experiences of our the world of the poet. lives, but experiences of our lives made into This fine collection compels us to recognise poetry. Giselle Maya as a tanka poet to be taken More than just reading his tanka and seriously. Maya brings a considerable range and admiring his literature, we should take a lesson: depth of experience to her writing. If there is one We should do more than we have done, write strand of meaning that prevails more than any more than we have written, and break more rules other in the book, it is the personal relationship than have bound us. Live, love, and write life to of the poet with her garden. She uses tanka as its fullest. windows revealing some of the inner life of feeling and insight into her world that we might not otherwise perceive. Frequently, Maya relies on the cumulative effect of a series of observations. Sharp writing and graphic imagery enable the reader to accompany her in the intimate setting of country Review: Treewhispers life in Provence: Reviewed by Patricia Prime flying to the treeline Treewhispers: Tanka I wait by Giselle Maya for the falcon handmade, 2013 this bright day in space Koyama Press Orders: [email protected] Reading through the tanka, we may notice the tight control of theme, form and technique, Treewhispers is a collection of tanka by Giselle and the arrangement of the tanka on the page. Maya. It is a handmade book on recycled paper, Maya writes with ease without disguising the bound with linen thread. The tanka are printed complexity of gardening or hiding the joy it gives one or two per page in calligraphic font, with her: Japanese images decorating three pages. Two endorsements of Maya’s tanka come a young fox from fine writers of tanka themselves. In the comes to the place Preface to the volume, written by Michael where I write McClintock, he says, I meet his eyes and try to draw him with words

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 89 We see Maya at her best in this collection; from Maya’s consciousness, and help to form the themes fully developed, and the imagery some of the stronger tanka in the collection. She warm and sensitive without sentimentality: is confident and eloquent about things as plants, animals, seasons, friends and family. But the core snowpeas of her feeling remains firmly located in her ready for planting garden in Provence; feelings that are exposed in a a light snowfall number of tanka. One of the finest of these may I must wait and practice be: the patience of a seed the peony In this tanka Maya develops the picture with leans into the breeze sustained subtlety and shows her love of nature while I wait by inference and allusion. to unravel the essence Maya uses simple language and makes direct of its white secret statements, easy to understand, but the feeling is there too. In the following tanka, for instance, The earth, renewal, history: for Maya is drought is the subject: traditionally worked and reworked as a symbol of social and personal regeneration and connection cracks to the past. This new collection knits into and riddle the earth now extends her crafting of these symbols. In without water Treewhispers, Maya employs tanka that creates a the green fields fade dialogue with the reader and is a wonderful into burnt sienna extended poetic achievement that brilliantly interweaves nature, human nature, contemporary In another tanka, Maya shows us the face of and cultural tropes. solitude:

what is the scent of solitude incense swirling silver to the ceiling of this high room Review: Een keuze uit In other tanka, style of language and form may be similar but the change of mood is still A Selection from Atlas Poetica clear, as in this tanka about her daughter: Reviewed by Patricia Prime two venerable plane trees have escaped A Selection from Atlas Poetica—Tanka of Place his pruning shears— Edited by Paul Mercken we untangle our feelings Uitgeverji Boekscout, Soest, Netherlands my daughter and I http://www.boekscout.nl ISBN: 978-94-6206-976-3 Many of Maya’s tanka are like these, short reflections on her life, the problems she faces and Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in the situations she is caught in. Other tanka relate Contemporary Tanka is a forum for the publication, to nature. But she also speaks of her animals, appreciation and advancement of tanka edited sharing tea with friends and reading her poems to by M. Kei. Paul Mercken has selected a number others. These and related topics are never far of Dutch tanka (and their translations into

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 90 English) from issues 1-3, 5-8 and 12-15 of the op goede vrijdag magazine to showcase in this volume. Many of afscheid nemen en de dood the names of the Dutch poets will be familiar to een plekje geven readers of Atlas Poetica: they include Ad het is leven en sterven Beenackers, Maurice De Clerck, Bep waar het allemaal om draait Grootendorst and Nette Menke, as well as the editor, Paul Mercken. The tanka are beautifully on good friday presented in this distinctive volume, one to three to take leave and give death per page, in both Dutch and English, with a place accompanying notes on several pages. to live and to die The ‘creative’ translator has to capture the is what it’s all about voice, the way of saying, so that readers can feel its character and drive. To achieve this he may Geert Verbeke’s is not a poetry of laughter depend on detailed judgment but also on luck, and forgetting; rather it characteristically seeks to research and hard work. As far as possible the define moments of emotion, in its ambiguity, by tanka must work in both the original language returning to personal experience. This mode of and in English. Bilingual texts enable the reader observation works well in the tanka string called with an interest in the poet who has a smattering “Intimate”, which opens or more of the source language, to those who may specialize in the target language to enjoy the van ragfijne mist poems; while those with no knowledge of the is de zoute avondlucht source language can read the tanka in the rouwzang draagt soms ver original for their rhythm and musicality. iemand legde bloemen neer Mercken opens the tanka sections with the op het graf van jouw ouders following poem which takes us immediately to the poetry of place of the tanka: briny evening sky of gossamer thin fog einde vakantie keening carries far een Duits winkelwagentje somebody has put flowers in Utrecht Centraal— on your parents’ grave in de lucht een vlucht ganzen op weg naar verre landen The city in Maurice De Clerck’s tanka

end of holidays de tram naar Moscou a German shopping cart lost amper een blik wisselen in Utrecht Central— een toevalstreffer in the sky a flock of geese prinses jouw naam ken ik niet on their way to foreign lands wel het vuur in jouw ogen

The tanka string from Nette Menke, “Rita” a streetcar to Moscow focusses on Good Friday. Menke died on April 6, exchanging a knowing glance 2009 and was cremated on Good Friday 2009. just a lucky shot Her work is a poem about deliberations, princess your name I don’t know memory’s processes, narrative and the anguish of just the fire in your eyes death. Personal remembrances and the challenge of evaluation, together with attention to the is explained in a note by Paul Mercken, who making of the poem, constitute this fine informs the reader, sequence. The last tanka reads:

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 91 ‘Moscow’ in the Tanka doesn’t refer to the Beyond the physical geography and history, capital of Russia, but to a suburb of Ghent, the narrative of the tanka include references to ironically also called ‘Moscow’. This name culture, countries, cities, people and the dynamics has historical roots. of times and spaces. Certainly this is strong selection of Dutch tanka: serious in parts, Bep Grootendorst’s more humorous tanka humorous in others, assured, wide-ranging in address her aunt’s toilet and a remedy for reference and exploratory. The tanka may be rheumatism. Ad Beenacker’s tanka is about a read as variations upon frames, stopping places, naturism camp. ideas and meanings culled from a variety of The majority of the tanka in this collection experienced tanka poets. This is a collection of are by Paul Mercken and range across the scene tracings and the possibilities of discovery remain from a train, a summer festival, love, travel, an open. The book serves to remind the reader of inside garden and Japan. Like many other tanka how powerful, how affecting to those of us who in the collection, they address complex live in different places, the act of writing as a relationships, the personal and collective past and source of the ancestral, the historical, the the present. It is significant that, amid expressions political, can be. of ambivalence and gestures towards significance, there are positive statements which exalt beauty:

fletse winterzon boven de pluizige kim van de loofbossen vooraan velden in vakken het oog zoekt kleur—Mondrian Review: Urban Tumbleweed, Notes from a Tanka Diary pale winter sun over the fuzzy rim of broadleaf forests Reviewed by M. Kei in the front field in plots Urban Tumbleweed, Notes from a Tanka Diary the eyes seeks colour—Mondrian by Harryette Mullen Graywolf Press In his final tanka Mercken tells us in a note © 2013 paperback 127 pp “Japan. The black-tailed gull or sea-cat (its cry ISBN 978-1-55597-656-9 resembles the mewing of cats) became Yamada’s bird October 1st 1975.” I quote the tanka: Harryette Mullen is a well-known African American academic poet and professor at Yamada haven— UCLA. Author of several previous collections, nu begroeten ons she brings us Urban Tumbleweed, Notes from a Tanka zwarstaartmeeuwen Diary. In her introduction, she mentions that she hoezeer gelijkt hun krijsen wanted to expand her sedentary lifestyle by op dat van een kat exercise and found that marrying poetry with walking motivated her to do more of both. She Yamada port— has joined the tradition of the ‘tanka walk’ and now black-tailed gulls the ‘tanka diary’ as represented in English by are welcoming us figures such as Sanford Goldstein and given it her how their shrieks own particular interpretation. resemble those of a cat All of which sounds promising, except it does not quite come to fulfillment. Knowing that

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 92 Japanese tanka are composed of thirty-one does she think she can accomplish in three lines syllables, she has attempted to keep her poems that she can’t in five? under that length, but most of them are too long. Most of her lines are composed of two parts, The best of her poems are the shortest ones, the so most of her poems can be subdivided into six ones that, like St. Exupery’s maxim, have pared parts. This allows her to set up pleasing away the unnecessary to leave the essential. symmetries and parallels—essential elements of Western style poetry. However, tanka, like other Looking up at the sky to estimate Asian arts, are deliberately asymmetrical. They my mood, as if to calculate the sum can’t be put into parallels; something else must of all clouds subtracted from the total blue. organize the structure. Learning how to do that is essential to making effective tanka. Mullen In the poem above, we have the well- skipped that; she stuck with familiar Western established technique of combining a natural rhythms. observation with the poet’s mood, but rendered Mullen has the ‘tanka eye,’ by which I mean with fresh language and a new observation. That the ability to see the importance of even the most is what poets do: take the known and make it new ordinary of objects. What she lacks is tanka’s again. compression: the ability to pack meaning into a tiny package of explosive potential. While No tree in sight to shade us from the searing effective use of language is typical of every kind glare, that cloudless day in Chinatown, of poetry, tanka is the extra turn of the screw. you stopped to buy a paper parasol. In the poem below we see Mullen’s Western rhythm married with tanka vision. Each line is My visitor from Nebraska buys composed of two parts and sets up pleasing a sack of assorted seashells at a souvenir parallels that build the long lines in a languor that shop, replicates the elongation of the subjective then scatters them on the beach. perception.

Some of her longer poems stretch out and Urban tumbleweed, some people call it, give us a glimpse of what sort of poetry she must discarded plastic bag we see in every city write when she is not constraining herself to a blown down the street with vagrant wind. short form. The poem above would be very different if it If I could hold this bowl of blue to cracked were a tanka. The parallels would be discarded lips, if to quench this desert thirst and the emotional elongation would be replaced I could swallow the sky, would I choke on by the tremulous ephemerality of the moment. carbon clouds? urban tumbleweed, This is a beautiful three line poem, but it isn’t a discarded plastic bag a tanka. Now we are at the crux of the matter: in every city, Mullen has chosen a three-line form for her blown down the street poems without a thorough understanding of by a vagrant wind what tanka is and what makes it work. She notes in her introduction that she has a limited Although it may seem unfair of me to alter knowledge of the form, and that her ‘adaptions’ the poem, I believe that doing so gives a greater deliberately depart from established convention. appreciation for what Mullen is doing. (If she However, she doesn’t explain why. What was it were a bad poet, her verses would not survive the about tanka that moved her to change it? What editorial knife.) The edit illustrates just what it is

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 93 about Mullen’s work that connects with and In the early 21st century, there was a debate departs from the tanka tradition. among tanka poets and editors about whether I do this for two reasons. First, some tanka enjambment was ‘allowed’ in tanka. (As if readers are so bent on a five-line definition that anyone could stop it!) Fortunately, the result has they will dismiss Mullen’s work as ‘not tanka’ and been an acceptance of enjambment—with the therefore of no interest; and second, to make caution that the poet should understand why they plain that although Mullen’s poems are not tanka are doing it, not blindly following a formula. per se, they are part of the larger body of tanka This is not a trivial point. Given the frequent literature. use of enjambment by African American tanka Tanka, waka, kyoka, gogyoshi, gogyohka, poets, had tanka editors disbarred it, it would shaped tanka, tanrenga, tankeme, cinquain, have been difficult for them to publish in tanka cinqku, lanterne, quintain, free verse, and nonce journals. The young generation of black poets, forms, not to mention their larger congregations, like Matsukaze and Raquel Bailey, are as steeped such as tanka prose and tanka sequence, form the in Sanchez as they are Princess Shikishi. The broad and fertile field of tanka literature. Tanka tanka poetry of the 21st century is increasingly has spun off even greater variations, such as diverse. haiku, senryu and renku. Tanka is one of the most fertile and enduring of verse forms. You could say I am borrowing light Many poets have chased the illusory Grail of from the moon when I write my tanka combining East and West in poetry, but few have after reading translations of Princess Skikishi. turned out as well as Mullen’s tumbleweeds. Like poems, tumbleweeds once had roots before they Yes, exactly so. went rolling down a road to somewhere else. Everything and everyone comes from On the commuter train, using her camera somewhere else. Sometimes blindly, stumbling phone instead of a mirror, she draws along a rutted road that is cursed and never on her lips a “sinfully scarlet” smile. escaped, and sometimes knowingly, with joy and celebration for the hard won wisdom of previous Within a small family of survivors generations. Sometimes boulders in the way the cost of a grandparent’s funeral cause new paths to be formed, and sometimes the is divided between two credit cards. familiar way becomes a well worn rut. It is the poet’s job to have the courage to know when to A shivering dog left out in the rain, follow and when to depart. dripping wet and cold as a miserable Urban Tumbleweed is that rare book that werewolf, each raindrop a silver bullet. requires us to prove to ourselves that we truly understand what we thought we already knew. Enjambment is a hallmark of Mullen’s work. The diary of Harryette Mullen’s daily walks She follows in the footsteps of Sonia Sanchez provides us with much we recognize, but who wrote 5–7–5–7–7 syllable tanka with rendered in a way that is not in accordance with frequent enjambment. Enjambment was our customs. It would be easy to reject it for practically unknown in tanka poetry by African failing to pass the tanka purity test, but anyone American poets ranging from Lewis Alexander who’s more concerned about policing definitions (1929) to Lenard Moore (late 20th century). than reading poetry is probably not a subscriber What was a distinctive element of Sanchez’s to this journal. personal style has been widely adopted by contemporary black poets following in her footsteps.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 94 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Atlas Poetica will publish short announcements in any Each tanka appears in the order in which it language up to 300 words in length on a space available was written with a date attached. We can see the basis. Announcements may be edited for brevity, clarity, poet sitting down to write on New Year’s Day, grammar, or any other reason. Send announcements in the and the multitude of poems and subjects that body of an email to: [email protected]—do not flow from his pen. We can follow him as he hikes send attachments. and writes tanka over the bones of a dead deer, and explores the mysteries of the natural world. And of course, we follow him to sea in the company of sails and pelicans. Keibooks Announces A large collection, January, A Tanka Diary, January, A Tanka Diary contains 640 poems of which more than 220 have never been seen before. The rest are by M. Kei collected from the scores of venues in which he has published around the world. Fans of his work January, A Tanka Diary, by M. Kei, is now available will no doubt recognize some of their favorite for purchase at AtlasPoetica.org or at your tanka, but will see them in context, as they were favorite online retailer. written, in the company of other poems from the same date. “Step inside this book and meet a magician —a man who knows the secrets of the sea and January, A Tanka Diary the land and the sky; a man who can catch the ISBN 978-0615871561 (Print) vastness of oceans and the smallness of sparrows 274 pp also available for Kindle in the same few words in five lines.”—Joy McCall

Opening with the cold days of January and Also available in print and ebook at following the poet through a year of his life, Amazon.com and other online retailers. January, A Tanka Diary, is the latest collection from the internationally respected tanka poet and Keibooks editor, M. Kei. Melancholy, hopeful, or satiric, P O Box 516 these are poems alive to the beauty of the world Perryville, MD 21903 USA that surrounds us. He has the ability to capture subjects as small as a single snowflake or as big as history, all told with an intimate honesty. In Kei’s hands, the ancient five line tanka poem breathes with contemporary life.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 95 side: formatting and coding it for publication on 100 Tanka by 100 Poets of the website, and write the press release Australia and New Zealand announcing it. You do not need to be a tanka poet to edit a 100 Tanka by 100 Poets of Australia and New Special Feature, but you do need to be Zealand; One Poem Each, edited by Amelia Fielden, moderately well-read in tanka. It is perfectly Beverley George and Patricia Prime, is with the acceptable to work in teams: several of the printer and will be published shortly. The book Special Features have utilized the services of 2–3 has an Introduction by Kiyoko Ogawa, co-editor people who combined their talents to produce a 2010-11 Poetry Nippon 1967-2011, and illustrations Special Feature. by Ron Moss. The books are AUS $18.50 each Send proposals for Special Features with plus postage and can be ordered from Stephen ‘Special Feature Proposal’ in the subject line to: Matthews, PO Box 3461, Port Adelaide 5015, [email protected]. AUS: [email protected]. * * * * * * Tournesol Books Publishes Guest Editors Wanted for Another Garden by Jeffrey Atlas Poetica Special Features Woodward Trade paperback Atlas Poetica publishes Special Features on its 180 pages, 6” x 9” website focussing on different aspects of tanka ISBN-13: 978-0615892511 from around the world. These special features $12.95 US / £8.50 UK / €10.00 offer one poem each by twenty-five poets and are Also available on Amazon Kindle accompanied by an introduction. They are open to guest editors who propose and manage the Readers of Another Garden will enjoy its project in accordance with guidelines found at: generous yet compact presentation of modern http://atlaspoetica.org/?page_id=136 (below the tanka in all of that genre’s rich variety. Jeffrey butterfly) and the general guidelines. Woodward, innovative poet, editor and critic, has ATPO publishes 4-5 special features per year assembled a selection of his best individual tanka, on no fixed schedule. A Special Feature is an tanka sequences and tanka with prose. The book excellent project for someone new to editing to is rounded-off by the inclusion of two influential develop their skills with support from Keibooks, essays, “The Road Ahead for Tanka in English” or for an experienced editor to focus on a and “The Elements of Tanka Prose,” and of an particular topic of interest. in-depth interview with the author, “Tanka Prose, Anyone who would like to submit a proposal Tanka Tradition.” should view already published Special Features— the first one, ‘25 Romanian Tanka’, is the model “Behind the lines of Jeffrey Woodward’s we have followed (with minor variations) for the tanka prose, in pieces like ‘The Silence That others—then submit a short proposal with the Inhabits Houses,’ with its meditation on a title, a short description of the focus, and an painting by Matisse, or ‘The Trial of Dorothy estimated timeline. The editor will be responsible Talbye, 1638,’ and its description of the ‘wild and for developing the call for submissions (we will unexplored interior’ of Salem, is a canny, help with this), editing the submissions, exultant understanding and possession of the responding to submissions, writing the mind and heart that is rare in prose and prized in introduction, and providing us with a clean poetry. ”—Michael McClintock, President, legible copy. We will take care of the technical Tanka Society of America (2004-2010)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 96 BIOGRAPHIES

Alexis Rotella has been writing haiku, senryu and writing both micro and longer poetry for over forty tanka for 30 years. Her work has appeared years, devoting most of his efforts today to tanka and internationally in hundreds of publications. Her books other Japanese short-forms. include Lip Prints (tanka 1979–2007), Ouch (senryu 1979-2007) and Eavesdropping (haiku 2007). Dr. Britton Gildersleeve recently retired as the long-time director of the Oklahoma State University Alhama Garcia was born in Spain and moved to Writing Project. Her work has appeared in New France in 1952. He did graduate studies in Paris Millennium Writings, Nimrod, Passager, Spoon River, and (Chinese) and Aix-en Provence (History of Arts). He Futures Trading, among other publications. Pudding contributed to Les Lettres Françaises, Action Poétique, La House Publications published her first two chapbooks; Saison des Cendres, and Telluries, 99 tanka, bilingual her third is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press. She version, in June 2013 by Éditions du Tanka also blogs at . poetry. Writing in English is a challenge! Bruce England began writing haiku seriously in Amelia Fielden published 6 volumes of original 1984. Other related interests include haiku theory and English tanka, including Light On Water (2010). She has haiku practice and the occasional tanka. A chapbook, collaborated with Kathy Kituai, and Saeko Ogi, to Shorelines, was published with Tony Mariano in 1998. produce 4 collections of responsive tanka, including the bilingual Word Flowers (2011). Amelia has also Carole Harrison is a photographer and long published 17 books of Japanese poetry in translation. distance walker, especially of the camino(s) in Spain. Retired from teaching, still dabbling in ‘olde wares’, Andrea J. Hargrove is an enthusiast of the written she lives at Jamberoo on the south coast of NSW, word. When she is not contributing to the world body Australia. of literature from her home in the barely-mapworthy town of Laurys Station, PA, she can be found working Carole Johnston lives in Lexington, Kentucky, but at her local public library. her heart still wanders the Jersey Shore. Recently retired from teaching creative writing in a high school Barbara A Taylor lives in northern NSW, arts program, she is free to pursue her passion for Australia. Her poems appear in many international writing tanka and haiku. She is now ‘cloud hidden’ journals and anthologies. Poetry with audio is at alone all day with her dog, working on a novel. http://batsword.tripod.com. Claire Everett lives in North Yorkshire, England, Beau Boudreaux teaches English in Continuing with her husband and five children. Her work is Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. His first widely published in international haiku and tanka book-length collection Running Red, Running Redder was journals. Claire was delighted to serve as one of the published in 2012. He has published in journals editors for Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka 2011 and in Antioch Review, Cream City Review, and The Southern Poetry December 2011, she became Tanka Prose editor for Anthology. Haibun Today. In 2012, she published her first collection of tanka, twelve moons. Bob Lucky teaches at the International Community School of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His D. V. Rožić lives in Croatia. Translator, haiku work has appeared in numerous journals, including poetess and writer, so far she published 11 books of Atlas Poetica, Modern Haiku, and The Prose-Poem Project. her texts and edited a number of haiku magazines, He is co-author of the chapbook my favorite thing. joint collections, and anthologies. Editor-in-chief of magazine IRIS, Ivanić Grad, Croatia and Deputy Brendan Slater is a father from Stoke-on-Trent, editor for haiku at Diogen pro cultura magazine, Sarajevo, England. He has been writing tanka since early 2010. Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has received a number of awards. Brian Zimmer lives in St. Louis Missouri within walking distance of the great Mississippi River. His Dawn Bruce is an Australian poet, living in work has appeared in Modern Tanka Today, red lights, The Sydney. She leads creative writing classes, has three Tanka Jour nal (Japan), Gusts & Skylark. He has been poetry collections, Stinging the Silence, Tangible Shadows,

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 97 and Sketching Light. Dawn was one of the editorial team UCLA in 1987. She has decided that running is much for raking stones and is the convenor of Ozku haiku easier than dealing with the art of writing good poetry. group, member of Red Dragonflies haiku group and member of Bowerbirds tanka group. Frank Watson was born in Venice, California and now lives in New York City. Edited or translated books Debbie Strange’ poetry, fiction and non-fiction include Fragments, One Hundred Leaves, and The dVerse have been published in: The Collective Consciousness, Anthology. He is editor of the monthly journal of Contemporary Verse 2, Pentimes, The Winnipeg Free Press, and poetry and art, Poetry Nook. Frank’s work has appeared online: VerseWrights, kernels, Notes from the Gean, The in Rosebud, Bora, and Prune Juice. He shares his work on Bamboo Hut, and Skylark. Debbie is also a singer/ his blog (www.followtheblueflute.com) and on Twitter songwriter and an avid photographer, whose abstract (@FollowBlueFlute). exhibition was recently hosted by the Assiniboine Park Conservatory. Genie Nakano has an MFA in Dance from UCLA. She performs, choreographs dance and Deborah P Kolodji is the moderator of the teaches Gentle Yoga, Meditation, and Tanoshii Tanka Southern California Haiku Study Group and the at the Japanese Cultural Center in Gardena, CA. She former president of the Science Fiction Poetry was a journalist for the Gardena Valley Newspaper Association. In addition to Atlas Poetica, her work can before she discovered tanka and haibun and was be found in Modern Haiku, Ribbons, Red Lights, Frogpond, hooked. bottle rockets, Strange Horizons, Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul, and other places. Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia. He was a geologist in a past life and wrote scientific Diana Teneva is a Bulgarian writer. Her poems papers, but nothing beats the thrill of having tanka were published in Sketchbook, World Haiku Review, The published in Atlas Poetica. Gerry’s tanka and tanka Heron’s Nest, The Mainichi, Asahi Haikuist Network by The prose also appear in Ribbons, GUSTS and Haibun Today. Asahi Shimbun, A hundred gourds, Shamrock, Chrysanthemum. Some of them are translated in Russian, French, Grunge is a gay Indo-American blog writer, with English, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, and Chinese. an interest in bugs, body modifications, and the end of the world. Eamonn O’Neill is retired after working for thirty years with Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline. He Hristina Pandjaridis was born in spring but her has travelled widely, both in America and Europe. favorite season is autumn. She graduated in While recovering from surgery he was introduced to Journalism and she used to work as a journalist in a the many facets of early Japanese poetry. Tanka has town’s newspaper. She has one novel written in joint become his favorite style. Still a novice, these are his authorship which is published and another one is first Tanka poems accepted for publication. expected to be published. She writes short stories, poems, book reviews, plays. She fell in love with the Ernesto P. Santiago, born 1967, is a Filipino who haiku four years ago. She lives in France. enjoys exploring the poetic myth of his senses, and has recently become interested in the study of haiku and Janet Lynn Davis lives in a rustic area north of its related forms. He lives with his wife Nitz in Athens, Houston, Texas. Her work has been published in Greece. numerous online and print venues. Many of her poems can be found at her blog, twigs&stones,. designer. She showcases her verses on Twitter under the handle @waijing_haiku. She lives in Australia, on Janick Belleau lives near Montreal, Canada. She the suburban outskirts of a coastal town that thinks it published five personal collections and directed/co- is a real city, despite not having nearly enough directed five collective works. Her French and English bookstores. She intends to someday write and feature articles (in Canada) and talks (in France, illustrate a collection of 1920’s-themed haiga, and is Canada, Japan) concentrate on the writing of women writing a few novels in her spare time. poets.

Flor de te (the nom de plume of Nelly Williams) Jenny Ward Angyal lives with her husband and thought writing poems would not be hard. All she had one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in to do was to be as disciplined as when she ran races in Gibsonville, NC, USA. She has written poetry since the 80’s and 90’s, or, to be as disciplined as when she the age of five and tanka since 2008. Her tanka and graduated cum laude with a BA in Spanish from other poems have appeared in various journals and

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 98 may be found online at . is available through Finishing Line Press.

Joan-Dianne Smith, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kenneth Slaughter grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio Canada, is a psychotherapist and part time writer. She and moved to Massachusetts. A computer analyst, he appears in The Globe and Mail, Cahoots Magazine, The discovered tanka in the summer of 2011 and read Dalhousie Review, Transition Magazine and in Christmas every tanka journal he could get his hands on. His Chaos and in Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career and the tanka has been published in several online and print Conflict of Modern Motherhood. She published a book of journals. Ken currently lives in Grafton, poetry entitled All Things Considered: Stella and Other Massachusetts. Poems. LeRoy Gorman’s poetry has appeared in print Joann Grisetti lives in Winter Springs Florida, since 1976. Since 1996, he has been editor of Haiku USA with her husband and two sons; her poetry has Canada Newsletter 1996–2006, Haiku Canada Review appeared or is forthcoming in Haiku Magazine, Lynx, beginning in 2007, annual anthologies, broadsides. In Inclement, and Haiku Journal. 1998, he began to publish poetry leaflets and postcards under his pawEpress imprint. Joanne Morcom is a social worker and poet who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She’s a founding Liz Moura lives in a converted factory in New member of The Magpie Haiku & Tanka Poets, as well England. as Haiku Canada and Tanka Canada. For more information on her published poetry, including two M. Kei is the editor of Atlas Poetica and editor-in- poetry collections, please visit www.joannemorcom.ca. chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka. He is a tall ship sailor in real life and has published nautical Johannes S. H. Bjerg. Male Dane trying to novels featuring a gay protagonist, Pirates of the Narrow communicate with the haiku, tanka, gogyoshi Seas. He recently published a collection of his poetry, community outside Denmark where these poetry January, A Tanka Diary. forms live a poor life. Magdalena Dale was born in, and lives in, Josette Frankel, a native of Brussels, Belgium, Bucharest, Romania. She is a member of the came to the US at sixteen. She graduated with a Romanian Society of Haiku. She publishes in several double major, English and French lit, and has taught magazines in her country and abroad. She was co- at San Diego State U as well as for the Community editor of „Take Five - tanka anthology”, vols. 3-4. She Colleges in San Bernardino and San Diego, CA. published collections of tanka, haiku and renga, co- Josette also is an artist and a Neurolinguistic, Reiki author Vasile Moldovan. Healing Practitioner. Margaret Owen Ruckert, Australian educator and Joy McCall is 68 years old and has written poetry, poet, has won the 2012 I.P. Poetry Book of the Year mostly tanka, for 50 years, publishing occasionally for musefood. A previous winner of NSW Women here and there. She lives on the edge of the old walled Writers National Poetry Award, her work is widely city of Norwich, UK. The poets she reads most often published. Margaret is Facilitator of Hurstville are Ryokan, Langston Hughes, M. Kei, Frances Discovery Writers and tutors English. Her first poetry Cornford, TuFu, Sanford Goldstein, and Rumi. You Deser v e Dessert, explored sweet foods. Kath Abela Wilson is the creator and leader of Poets on Site in Pasadena, California. Closely related Marilyn Humbert lives in the outer Northern to poetry of place, this group performs on the sites of suburbs of Sydney surrounded by bush. Her work their common inspiration. She loves the vitality and appears in Eucalypt, Kokako, Moonbathing, Simply Haiku experimental micropoetic qualities of twitter and Atlas Poetica. (@kathabela) and publishes in many print and online journals, as well as anthologies by Poets on Site. Mary Hind was born in the UK and lives in Australia. Her haiku and short poetry has appeared Kelly Belmonte is a poet, blogger (http:// on Melbournetrains for the Moving Galleries project allninemuses.wordpress.com), and management and as tweets at the Melbourne Writers Festival. consultant with expertise in non-profit organizational Recently she won the British Haiku Society’s haibun development and youth mentoring. A regular competition and is a member of HaikuOz. contributor of poetry to the Twitter-verse via

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 99 Matsukaze is a classical/operatic vocalist, City. His poems have been published in American Poetry thespian, and minister. He was recently re-introduced Review, Poetry Now, Red Cedar Review, Atlas Poetica, red to tanka in 2013 by M. Kei, editor of Atlas Poetica, lights, among others. In 2009, Peter published text Journey of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka. He lives messages, the first volume of American poetry totally in Louisiana; dividing his time between there and devoted to Gogyohka. Houston, TX. Pravat Kumar Padhy born in Odisha, India, Matthew Caretti is influenced in equal parts by holds a Masters and a Ph.D in Applied Geology. from his study of German language and literature, by his Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad. Short poems Zen training in the East, and by the Beat writers. appear in Lynx, Kritya, Notes From the Gean, Sketchbook, Matthew won the Broadsided Haiku-Year-in-Review Atlas Poetica, Simply Haiku, Red Lights, Shamrock, Contest. He currently teaches English and directs the Magnapoets, Bottle Rockets, The Heron’s Nest, Haigaonline, Writing Center at a college preparatory school in The Houston Literary Review, The Hundred Gourds, The Red Pennsylvania. River Review, Cyclamens and Swords, Wordgathering etc.

Maxianne Berger, poet and literary translator, is Ramesh Anand’s haiku poetry has appeared in active in both the French and the English haiku and many publications, across 14 countries, including Bottle tanka communities in Montreal and beyond. Her Rockets Press, ACORN, Magnapoets, The Heron’s Nest, writing meanders between Japanese forms and SouthbySoutheast and Frogpond. His Haiku has been OuLiPo constraints, and she is among those featured translated in German, Serbian, Japanese, Croatian, in Language Matters: Interviews with 22 Quebec Romanian, Telugu and Tamil. His tanka is Poets (Signature, 2013). The author of two poetry forthcoming in many journals. collections, she has also co-edited one haiku anthology in English and two tanka anthologies in French. Dr. Randy Brooks is Dean of Arts & Sciences at Millikin University where he teaches courses on Mel Goldberg earned an advanced degree in haikai traditions, and tanka writing. He is co-editor of literature, then taught in California, Illinois, Arizona Mayfly magazine and publisher of Brooks Books. His and at Stanground College in England. For seven tanka have been published in Ash Moon Anthology, and years, he traveled in a small motor home throughout the Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka for 2008, 2009 and the US, Canada, and Mexico. He lives in Mexico with 2010. his partner, professional artist Bev Kephart. Richard St. Clair (b. 1946) is a classical composer Michelle Brock lives on a bush block near the and pianist who enjoys writing haiku, tanka, renku, Molonglo River in Queanbeyan, Australia. For many and other short forms. A native of North Dakota, he years she worked as a Town Planner in Canberra but has lived in Massachusetts for most of his life. now enjoys writing short stories and poetry. Her tanka and tanka prose appear in Eucalypt, Skylark, and Haibun Roary Williams lives in Albuquerque, New Today. She is delighted to also have her work included Mexico, originally moving there from Detroit. He lives in Atlas Poetica. with his wife and five ferrets. He is 54 years old, and has spent the last four years writing micropoetry. He Patricia Prime is co-editor of Kokako, reviews/ writes most of his stuff directly on Twitter, and has interviews editor of Haibun Today and writes reviews greatly been encouraged by the #micropoetry for the NZ journal Takahe and for Atlas Poetica. Her community there. poems and reviews have appeared in the World Poetry Almanac (Mongolia), 2006-2012. Currently she is one Rodney Williams’ tanka have been published in of the guest editors for the World Haiku Anthology, Australia, America, New Zealand, Austria, and edited by Dr. Bruce Ross. Canada; and on international websites. Before editing Snipe Rising from a Marsh, he had tanka appear in other Paul Mercken, Belgian philosopher and ATPO Special Features, plus Tak e Fiv e and Catzilla! medievalist, former treasurer and/or secretary of the (USA), Grevillea and Wonga Vine, and Food for Thought Haiku Kring Nederland. Likes participating in (Australia). international renga by e-mail and is learning Chinese. Just published poems in Dutch, Bunnikse haiku’s & ander Roman Lyakhovetsky, originally from Russia, now dichtspul (Bunnik Haiku’s & Other Poetry Stuff). lives in Israel. His haiku appeared in various journals including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Heron’s Nest and Peter Fiore lives and writes in Mahopac, New TinyWords. He is one of the editors of russian- York, USA, located on the north side of New York language Senryu and Kyoka online journal, Ershik.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 100 Sanford Goldstein has been writing tanka for many anthologies. Born in the Bronx and raised on more than fifty years. In addition, he has co-translated the Jersey Shore, she now lives in North Haven, CT many Japanese writers—including Akiko Yosano, with her husband Edward Ryan, a psychotherapist. Mokichi Saito, and Takuboku Ishikawa. It is to Takuboku that Goldstein feels most indebted. Terri L. French is a poet/writer and Licensed Goldstein’s poems focus on what he has experienced, Massage Therapist, living in Huntsville, Alabama. suddenly seen, suddenly reflected on—they are not Terri enjoys writing nonfiction, prose, and creative imagined. nonfiction, as well as haiku, haibun, tanka and linked forms. Currently, she is editor of the senryu journal, Seánan Forbes, a 7th-generation Manhattanite, Prune Juice. She is a member of the HSA, Alabama has appeared in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Writer’s Conclave, and Alabama Poetry Society. Nest, Acorn, A Hundred Gourds, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Prose-Poem Project, and the Mid-America Poetry Tess Driver’s poetry has featured in opera libretto, Review, as well as a chapbook, String to Bow, and an drama performance, radio and art gallery exhibitions. international anthology, A New Resonance, Volume She has won poetry prizes including a political poetry Eight. She’s about to start on a practice-based PhD. prize and was New Poet for Friendly Street Poets. She Her thesis will be about place and poetry. loves to travel and has published many poems and articles about her travels. Sergio Ortiz is a retired educator, poet, painter, and photographer. He published At the Tail End of toki is a writer of fiction, poetry, and occasional Dusk, in 2009, and topography of a desire, in 2010. He is a nonfiction, as well as an amateur photographer, with three-time nominee for the 2010 and 2011 Sundress works appearing online and in print. toki likes Best of the Web Anthology and a 2010 Pushcart listening to the music of the spheres, pondering the nominee. He lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico. interstices of the universe and taking long walks in liminal spaces. For more information, visit Sonam Chhoki was born and raised in the eastern tokidokizenzen.wordpress.com or @tokidokizenzen on Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Her works have been Twitter. published in poetry journals and anthologies in Australia, Canada, Japan, UK and US and included Tomáš Madaras (1972) is an associate professor of in the Cultural Olympics 2012 Poetry Parnassus and mathematics at P.J. Šafárik University in Slovakia. His BBC Radio Scotland Written Word programme. intersection with the world of art comprises music composing and guitar and piano playing (most often Stacey Dye writes to touch people. Her favorite at graph theory conferences), and occasional poetry subject is the human condition. Her love affair with writing. words is life long and she collects them on rocks, jewelry and through music and inspirational quotes. Vasile Moldovan was born in a Transylvanian She is a member of AHA! Poetry Forum and her village on 20 June 1949. He was cofounder (1991) credits include red lights, Moonbathing and Fire Pearls 2 chairman of the Romanian Society of Haiku (2009). among others. . Dolorosa (1998), The moon’s unseen face (2001), Noah’s Ark (2003), Ikebana (2005) and On a summer day (2010). Also Susan Burch resides in Hagerstown, MD with her he published together with Magdalena Dale the renku husband, 2 kids, and warped sense of humor. She book Fragrance of Lime. loves reading, doing puzzles, and Coca-Cola slurpees. Violette Rose-Jones is a student of the Writing Susan Constable’s tanka have appeared in Program at Southern Cross University, Australia. She numerous international journals and anthologies. Her has been published in a number of journals including collection, The Eternity of Waves, is one of the winning Notes from the Gean, Heron’s Nest and Skylark. She entries in the 2012 eChapbook Awards, sponsored by is happily married and has a teenage son. Snapshot Press. Susan is currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds. Yancy Carpentier is a student of the 18th & 19th centuries. Her interests include military and maritime Sylvia Forges-Ryan has published her poetry in history, and poetry of all flavors. The Mediterranean Americas Review, Dogwood Review, Colere, Insight, Shambala and the Ottoman Empire are her keenest attractions.. Sun, Tricycle, Inquiring Mind, The Buddhist Poetry Review, She lives with her husband in the Deep South. UUWorld, Pyramid Review of Arts and Literature, The Yale Anglers’ Journal, and the Merton Seasonal, as well as in

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 101 Publications by Keibooks

Edited by M. Kei

This Short Life, Minimalist Tanka, by Sanford Goldstein (Spring, 2014)

circling smoke, scattered bones, by Joy McCall

Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka (Vol.4)

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka

Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology

M. Kei’s Poetry Collections

January, A Tanka Diary

Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack tanka and short forms

Heron Sea : Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay tanka and short forms

M. Kei’s Novels

Pirates of the Narrow Seas 1 : The Sallee Rovers Pirates of the Narrow Seas 2 : Men of Honor Pirates of the Narrow Seas 3 : Iron Men Pirates of the Narrow Seas 4 : Heart of Oak

Man in the Crescent Moon : A Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure

The Sea Leopard : A Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure (forthcoming 2014)

Fire Dragon

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 102 INDEX

Alexis Rotella, 55 Kath Abela Wilson, 18, 24, 34 Alhama Garcia, 10 Ken Slaughter, 52 Amelia Fielden, 44 LeRoy Gorman, 57 Andrea J. Hargrove, 14 Liz Moura, 38 Barbara A. Taylor, 41 M. Kei, 5, 17, 46, 88, 92 Beau Boudreaux, 26 Magdalena Dale, 36 Bob Lucky, 63 Margaret Owen Ruckert, 59 Brendan Slater, 29 Marilyn Humbert, 15, 51 Brian Zimmer, 18 Mary Hind, 55 Britton Gildersleeve, 45 Matsukaze, 20, 21, 30 Bruce England, 54 Matthew Caretti, 58 Carole Harrison, 49 Maxianne Berger, 77 Carole Johnston, 56 Mel Goldberg, 50 Claire Everett, 37 Michelle Brock, 59 Đ. V. Rožić, 36 Patricia Prime, 40, 89, 90 Dawn Bruce, 60 Paul Mercken,48 Debbie Strange, 53 Peter Fiore, 65 Deborah Kolodji, 7 Pravat Kumar Padhy, 55 Diana Teneva, 53 Ramesh Anand, 47 Eamonn O’Neill, 37 Randy Brooks, 65 Ernesto P. Santiago, 34 Richard St. Clair, 28 Fiona Tsang, 35 Roary Williams, 49 Flor de te, 9 Rodney Williams, 57 Frank Watson, 51 Roman Lyakhovetsky, 41 Genie Nakano, 7, 8, 64 Sanford Goldstein, 9, 62 Gerry Jacobson, 16, 27 Seánan Forbes, 19 Grunge, 11, 14, 42 Sergio Ortiz, 12, 13, 52 Hristina Pandjaridis, 65 Sonam Chhoki, 14 Janet Lynn Davis, 50 Stacey Dye, 51 Janick Belleau, 66, 77 Susan Burch, 61 Jenny Ward Angyal, 27 Susan Constable, 45 Joan-Dianne Smith, 11 Sylvia Forges-Ryan, 58 Joann Grisetti, 64 Terri L. French, 15 Joanne Morcom, 63 Tess Driver, 36 Johannes S. H. Bjerg, 26, 60 Toki, 53 Josette Frankel, 8 Tomáš Madaras, 24 Joy McCall, 22, 23 Vasile Moldovan, 36 Kelly Belmonte, 34 Violette Rose-Jones, 13, 56

Our ‘butterfly’ is actually an Atlas moth (Attacus atlas), the largest butterfly/moth in the world. It comes from the tropical regions of Asia. Image from the 1921 Les insectes agricoles d’époque.v

Atlas Poetica • Issue 17 • Page 103