Online internet courses by Call of the Page

Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku; tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

Call of the Page (Alan & Karen)

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Tanka Prose aka Tanka Story - prose narrative with tanka 5-line lyrical poems

Tanka Story
A small tanka prose (tanka story) description:

Tanka are five line poems well-grounded in concrete images yet infused with lyric intensity, with an intimacy from direct expression of emotion tempered with implication. They contain ingredients of suggestion colored by shade and tone, setting off a nuance more potent than direct statement. Almost any subject, explicitly expressing your direct thoughts and feelings can be contained in this short form poetry.

Tanka Prose is similar to the prose of the haibun, but a little more subjective perhaps, and emotive, as influenced by the tanka poems themselves. 


EXAMPLES:



Steps

Not just any steps, but Covent Garden underground tube station when the lifts don’t work.

It’s not just the slow rumble of different sole thicknesses
absorbing the trains as we climb:

It’s more than humanity, it’s those bloody steps,
those stairs are in love with us, they must be, don’t you think?

the moon
at my shoulder
a child cycles
across the Sea 
of Tranquility


Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.2 (May 2016)


Note: 
Covent Garden Tube Station:

The stairs and steps of Covent Station:

The station itself:



***

Sky Fishing 

When there are fish that drop from the sky, they are not necessarily dead, just visiting.

I know this woman who waits for fish to die. Mary is not mad; she is just not a fish killer. 

She tells me she hangs around for them to dive
from cars, aeroplanes, or from tankers in busy shipping lanes. 

Once a fish fell off a cliff, and Mary was driving
an open top bright green Volkswagen round and round. 
There’s always a plate of salad on the passenger’s side.

I look even now to see if there’s a fish flapping in a lay-by. 
A soft-top car isn't good in a city full of crime but it can be good for fish dropping in. 

this black hole
in my coffee
I fold the dirty laundry
back into myself
window-rattling a moon


Alan Summers
Publication credit:  Blithe Spirit Vol. 27 No. 2 May 2017




***



Coch Rhi Ben

nuclear winter
I only count
98 red balloons

There's singing snow, and I try to catch its tune. A robin with the prerequisite red breast is keeping pace, flying and jumping from spade handle to outpost, dodging the bullets and the missiles. We make our final stand, and form a duet, defiant that we forget politics, and who killed his brother.

the snow
is stinging
and we both
join up
the red dots


Alan Summers
Blithe Spirit (February 2018)


NOTES:

Coch Rhi Ben

As Lugh was the primary god representing the red sun, his name in alleged common parlance would have been "Coch Rhi Ben" anglicised to "Cock Robin" – a leftover from the belief that souls became birds after death. 


The haiku (deliberately numbered as 98) refers both to Banksy’s famous image Girl with Balloon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_Balloon 

to the famous song "99 Luftballons" ("99 balloons") which is an anti-war protest song by the German band Nena. 

An English-language version titled "99 Red Balloons", with lyrics by Kevin McAlea, was also released on the album 99 Luftballons in 1984 after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan. Of course now Japan is under nuclear threat by another country, just as they are unveiling a memorial to all those Japanese haiku poets who protested about entering the WWII arena.


English:

German:

Wikipedia:

"99 Luftballons" (German: Neunundneunzig Luftballons, "99 balloons") is an anti-war protest song by the German band Nena from their 1983 self-titled album. 

An English-language version titled "99 Red Balloons", with lyrics by Kevin McAlea, was also released on the album 99 Luftballons in 1984 after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan. The English version is not a direct translation of the German original and contains somewhat different lyrics.[1]

[1]
 "99 Red Balloons – interview with the writer, Kevin McAlea". Eighty-eightynine. Retrieved 17 July 2014:




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