I was going through some posts on medium and I came across a haiku page. I decided to check it maybe it will make me go on medium once in a while to publish. Reading the guidelines, I came across another form of Japanese poem apart from haiku and I was thrilled to know more about it. I went googling and the first thing I saw was a Tanka poem generator. I tried it out and it gave me this with the image below.
Husband - A Tanka Poem
He is peaceful and patient.
With a caring tall
Active personality
When he stands I feel happy
Generated with a poem generator
This form of Japanese poetry also has a structured syllabus to it which will better explain your poetry than haiku which in total 31 syllable structure for the English version. When writing a tanka, make sure not to use any punctuation at the end of the poetry
While haiku has a 5–7–5 syllable structure, Tanka has the structure 5–7–5–7–7.
The tanka is sometimes separated by the three “upper lines” (kami no ku) and the two “lower ones” (shimo no ku). The upper unit is the origin of the haiku. The brevity of the poem and the turn from the upper to the lower lines, which often signals a shift or expansion of subject matter, is one of the reasons the tanka has been compared to the sonnet. There is a range of words, or engo (verbal associations), that traditionally associate or bridge the sections. Like the sonnet, the tanka is also conducive to sequences, such as the hyakushuuta, which consists of one hundred tankas. - source
Since I used tanka generator for the first tanka above, I decided to try my hands on it without the generator and this is what I come up with
the little girl was startled
I was in the room
arranging for the next day
a messy situation
To follow the instruction, I tried to pivot the story with I was in the room and the first part was talking about the little girl that was with me in the room who was startled by the commotion and the second part was pivoted to what I was doing in the room.
I tried following the rules I got from the post How to write a tanka poem. You may check it out to understand more about how you can write a tanka poem.
I will be trying more of this kind of Japanese poem and I hope you will try it out as well.
Thanks for reading.