Tanka for Utakai Hajime

木漏れ日に 本を開きも 文の君

思い想いて 心浮き立つ

I composed this tanka for the 2015’s Utakai Hajime ceremony. The information on the Utakai Hajime is found on the Imperial Household Agency’s web site. (http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/e-culture/utakai.html) However, I ended up not submitted it, because I did not feel it was complete and well edited. And I simply ran out of time to make it better.

A tanka has extra 14 letters than haiku. Though these extra 14 characters add the depth and complexity to the world of tanka, it is also add another challenge to creating one. It is challenging because I must expand the story only with 14 letters whereas in haiku I can leave it to the readers’ imagination.

For this particular tanka and all other tankas on this site, I would like to grant more rights than the rest of the site and explicitly site my interests. Since this site is still under development, I haven’t entirely decided which portion of my works to be shared. As the general ritual of tanka, I will be happy  to see someone composing renka, do a honkadori, or any sort of creation based on my tanka.

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5 thoughts on “Tanka for Utakai Hajime”

  1. I, too, did not submit my tanka for the Utakai Hajime, thinking I could not properly translate it from English to Japanese. Maybe next year.

  2. Dear Midori,

    The next year’s theme will be announced in a few days. We’ll have about 8 months to work on it. Good luck!

    1. Thank you very much! I will try to write a poem on the subject “person.” Please try to write a poem for next year: good luck to you, too! Do you write in English or Japanese?

      1. @Midori,

        Thank you. Good luck to you, too.
        I write in Japanese as you can see haikus and one tanka on this site.

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