Skeleton Architecture

More! Yes, more terrific tankas from guests to the tanka project. I'm so thrilled to have these guys taking part in this project, so I'm sharing their work with you so you can love it too. First up is another awesome artwork from Joseph Massey ( you've previously seen his work here ), this one speaks to the world being rubbed out by November and reminds me of Thomas Hood's 'November' ( set to music by the Art of Noise ). I love this tanka from Joseph Massey. It reminds me of Thomas Hood's poem, November, and speaks to the grey on grey outside my window. #Repost @tongbliss (@get_repost) ・・・ Still writing tanka over here. #poetry #poem #poems #poetsofinstagram #haiku #tanka #tankaproject #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #tanka #inspiration #poetryofinstagram #instapoetry #igpoetry #instapoetry, #poetsofig A post shared by Tanka Project (@tanka_project) on Nov 7, 2017 at 11:29am PST Elizabeth Bae-rett Browning does not enjoy the tanka, and ...

My apologies, it's been a while since I've put together a selection of the tankas from guests to the Tanka Project, and you can no doubt tell from some of the subject matter in these three, fabulous tankas. First up is Brianne Bowman, with a Halloween inspired tanka which I adore because of the image she conveys of a book as a magical place of refuge, it reminds me of Julia Donaldson's 'I Opened a Book' ("I opened a book and in I strode./Now nobody can find me./..."), but with a gorgeous fairytale twist. I am currently reading Sarah J Maas' A Court of Mist and Fury, and would love to step into the book and discover the artist's quarter in the city of Velaris. Feyre and Rhysand can do the flying around, those dresses are never going to suit me. I've been working in a library for a week and my list of things to read is even more endless than it was before so this Halloween inspired tanka from Brianne really spoke to me! Thanks for sha...

If you're not following the Tanka Project on Instagram (@tanka_project)  you're missing out - there are tankas from me, and from lots of other talented people, these three are just a selection. The first is from Gary Mansfield, who has featured before , and I love the way he summons the interior of the bar-room, where all things can be set right and be set right again to bring focus onto a universal truth. Many thanks to Gary Mansfield for letting me share this little gem. #Repost @mansfieldgary (@get_repost) ・・・ #tanka. #poetryforbreakfast. #morningpoetry. #morningpoem. #poetryforbabyboomers #reflectivepoetry #theoryofpoetry. #teachingpoetry. #poetrytherapy. #poetrytochangeourworld. #beingvulnerablethroughpoetry. #appliedpoetry. #analyzingpoetry. #annelamott. #letusthinkaboutthis. #poseía. #poetry. #poems. #studyingpoetry #discussingpoetryforschool. #whyiwritepoetry. #sharingpoetry #messagesinpoetry. #symbolisminpoetry. #metaphorpoem. A post shared by Tanka Proj...

Sometimes I use the photo prompts from Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge to inspire a tanka (and a photo!). Recently the prompt was 'one of a kind', so I went out into the dreary looking for something that was one of a kind. I must admit that I thought of a selfie, but I wasn't feeling photogenic, and looking around at the grey and the dreary and the still-f**ing-raining, I wasn't feeling that anything was particularly different, or one of a kind. Then I thought of the saying that you can't step into the same stream twice. It might look the same but the water has moved on and changed. The grey dreary might look the same but there is a different quality to the rainclouds, all that water, above and below is moving on, as are we all. Today someone has died, and their loss is felt. Today someone is born. Today all the other things inbetween have happened to someone somewhere. Today is one of a kind, and the only remarkable thing about that is that you can't t...

Here's a tanka inspired by the Fat Mum Slim photo a day prompt, 'floral', and also by a conversation I had with someone about high tides. The tides are very high at the moment, and apparently these are called Spring Tides even though they're in Autumn. I guess it's Spring somewhere!

Esperanto is a language crafted for peace. It's about ten times easier to learn than other languages and has a lot less of the baggage of colonialism that English lugs around with it. I love the English language, but think that you get so much more from the world if you can see it through another language too, so I've been learning Esperanto lately, and here's the first of my Esperanto tankas. This is loosely based on Tanka #1: I seek to conjure , although due to there being more syllables in Esperanto, and more simple language, I've reduced it down to being a poem about summoning Autumn through an imagined painting of the leaves. Esperanto estas lingvo kreita por paco. Ĝi estas proksimume dekoble pli facila pli ol aliajn lingvojn.  Mi amas la anglan lingvon, sed mi pensas, ke oni vidas pli multe de la mondo kun alia lingvo, do mi lernis Esperanton lastatempe, kaj jen estas la unua el miaj Esperantaj tankaoj.  Ĉi tio estas inspirita de tanka #1 .

The prompt over at Mum Turned Mom this week is Lonely, and it got me to thinking about poetry, Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud  strikes me as odd, it is rare one seens a single cloud in the lake district, surely if there was one by itself, it would be relishing that moment of freedom? I also thought of Henri's mash up of Wordsworth's poem , and of how things can be taken out of the familiar context to give new meaning, both to the word and to the context. The other thing in my head when I think about 'lonely', is poor Tallulah, who is perhaps the loneliest person at Bugsy Malones when she sings the song about not having to be lonely. But that's what we do. We put our best foot forward, paint on a face and go on with the show. Anyway, I wrote a poem which doesn't want to be very long, about that little cloud. There are lots of clouds in the sky as I write, but I can't see her. I think sometimes we can feel most lonely when we're surroun...

October was glorious up here on the West Coast of Scotland. A month of pretty good weather, and fantastic colour. Halloween was warm enough to not wear coats, which was brilliant. But now we're in November. The grey month when the cold and the dark come. And it has come. We had our first frost on the 1st, our new tree (a Katsura which has come up from Yorkshire) lost its leaves in horror at its new climate, although I'm hoping this is an Autumn thing.  The colours on the trees are fading to muddy brown and black, and the wind, the rain, and the hail, are becoming more frequent visitors. At home I'm attempting to get my hygge on to see through the winter. I've gone right off gin and tonic, and need something more wintery to sip while I snuggle under a crocheted blanket and watch the Westworld (does anyone else sing this every time it's on?). Any suggestions? Anyway, in order to keep my little mind sunny during these dark days I've taken up two new...

And so we're into Autumn, I swear I heard the tyres screeching as the season turned. I'm writing this at my desk in the light of my little lamp and it's almost 9am, but it's gloomy because it's chucking it down. I love Autumn. I spent ages yesterday watching gannets diving for fish in the roiling sea, keeping their places despite the wind. And I love the fog that can wrap us up in a quiet blanket. I used to live in the Isle of Man, where the god Manannan takes care of his drunk little islanders by wrapping his warm cloak around them. So whenever I can't see the islands near us for the fog I wonder if Manannan is wrapping his cloak around us too. It feels like it. Anyway, The Prompt, over on the Mum Turned Mom blog this week is Motion, which just had me thinking of the motion of the ocean, and of the good luck I have to be able to live near the sea again. So I am sharing this poem which I wrote earlier this year, inspired by a line in Andrew McMillan...