Category Archives: Tanka Prose

The Best Poem I Ever Wrote (Nearly)

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I spoke to Number Two Son in Canada last night. I had been intending to nag him for some time in a gently paternal way, but thought I’d wait for him to call as it’s cheaper to nag on his bill. As it turned out, he is ahead of me. He has already made some steps towards signing up to do some professional qualifications and is also seeking a pensions advisor to bolster his pension arrangements. Clearly we have a telepathic link. We all want our children to better than we have done, and both of mine already have. This is the advantage of starting off with a parent who is a fairly low benchmark.

A few nights ago I wrote the best poem I have ever written (apart from the one about the Kingfisher, but I’m keeping that under wraps for now). It has taken three years to write and has been through many versions. I sent it out last month and it came back, but I had another look, tinkered with it let it rest. I am going to look at it again tonight and see if I still think it is the best I’ve ever written. There is a chance I will spot a new crop of faults. Even if I do, it’s till going out again – after three years it’s time for it to do something. It’s a bit like kids – there’s a point when they have to go.

White-tailed Bumblebee

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as good as I thought, so I made a couple of changes (I hesitate to say improvements). looked at it and decided not to send it out after all. The real problem is the subject – the field that hosted the Battle of Naseby in 1645. I’m not sure if it’s a wide enough subject to appeal to editors. I’m still, in truth, smarting from being told that my Adlestrop poem was too obscure. That was in February last year and I’m still annoyed. I’ve just been looking to see if it was ever accepted elsewhere. The trouble is that there is a black hole in my record keeping after the computer broke down and that brings a lack of certainty.  Did it go unpublished, or can I simply not find the acceptance?

My contention here is that if I am reading an American poem I am expected to, be able to place the South Boston Aquarium  or a red wheelbarrow or a road not taken, so why not Adlestrop? When Frost wrote about the road not taken he was possibly referring to the road taken by his friend Edward Thomas , writer of  Adelstrop and was wondering whether to stay with his family or to join the army. For back up I’m citing this article, which mentions Adlestrop and gives some brilliant examples. It’s only short, and worth reading just for the two examples.

Dog Rose

Apart from the question of obscurity (which is easily solved by Google these days) how about a footnote? I personally find them condescending in most cases – is the writer merely seeking to show how clever they are? But they have their place.

The brilliant poem? In the end it wasn’t necessary. I found one that was just as good, tinkered and sent it off. This morning I woke up and thought of an extra line that would have improved it greatly . . .

As someone once said, you never finish a poem you just set it adrift.

The Power of Planning 2

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If you have come straight here, you my need to go back to what is Part 1. However, it isn’t listed as such because I didn’t know it was going to be  two-parter when I started. Or even when I finished, to be honest.

hat happened was that I drifted off at a tangent and didn’t realise I was going to want to revisit it.

So, the poetry plan. First we need a target that is Specific. We will go for the acceptance of 50 Japanese style poems and 25 “ordinary” ones. That’s four a month for the Japanese and two a month for the others.It’s not a huge target, as I’ve already had thirty one accepted in the last ten months.I’m thinking that I will end the 12 months on about 40. Fifty is not a big jump from there. The twenty five is a bigger jump, as I haven’t submitted any fr a couple of years, but at two a month I should be able to do that. To be more specific I am going to go for 20 Haibun/Tanka Prose, 20 Tanka and ten haiku. I’m not very good at haiku so that is probably the biggest challenge.

That’s specific done. Measurable is easy enough – acceptances of poetry submitted  in the months of August 2023 to July 2024. It can be a bit tricky measuring poetry as the lead time after acceptance can make counting tricky, which is why I’m counting acceptances.

I’ve already covered Achievable in the Specific category – none of the figures I’ve quoted are outrageous and I’m sure the Japanese figure is going to be realistic as I hardly submit any haiku at the moment. The other figure, the twenty five is a bit more speculative, but not unrealistic. I have lost count but I think when I was submitting free verse a few years ago I had bout ten accepted by decent journals.

My Orange Parker Pen

Realistic already seems to have been fully covered from the writing point of view. From the publishing point of view, there should be enough openings to get this number of poems published. There are some magazines where i do badly, as in always get knocked back, but there are enough to take fifty and I will just have to up my game and try harder to crack the others. That’s the thing with targets – with targets I try different magazines, without them I tend to withdraw to my comfort zone.

Time? Twelve months. I assumed that from the beginning.

I will now need to set my diary out for 12 months, including all the likely magazines and submission windows. Then I will have to remember to keep a total and compare it to the plan. That’s it. Simple.

Now let’s see what happens.

Stone on the Floor

 

 

 

 

 

Time for a Change of Pace

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Here’s a Tanka prose from a while back. I thought it was time for a more relaxed posting. It’s tempting, after my recent reading of a book of poetry criticism, to write about the poem. But I won’t, because it won’t improve anything.

This was first published in Ribbons, in Winter 2023.

The Shadow of the Red Kite

Simon Wilson, Nottingham, UK

The autumn sun warms my back as we sit in the old stable yard. My wife outlines her plans for the day and I run my fingers over the grain in the silvery surface of the weathered tearoom table. Our tea and bara brith arrive. Translated from the Welsh, bara brith means speckled bread, referring to the dried fruit that is its most noticeable feature.

Three wasps also arrive. Two fly away as my wife flaps her hand at them, but one lands on the table and stalks my food. It hauls itself over the rim and begins to gorge on the juicy centre of a raisin. My wife tells me to chase it off but I don’t have the heart. It is September and soon it will die. I can spare a little dried fruit for a fellow struggler.

She breaks off the conversation and points over my shoulder. I turn to see the distinctive silhouette of a Red Kite overhead. When I was a child, it was a very rare bird in the UK, and survived only in Wales. I remember the combined thrill and disappointment I experienced on a family holiday when I was ten years old–the profile and the flash of red that denoted a kite, but at a distance so great I could hardly see it, and never quite believed I had seen one.

kites in the sky
and mist on the mountains
with you beside me
if this is all life is
it is enough

 

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm