How to Write a Tanka Prose

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Buzzard pursued by crow

This an answer to a query raised in the comments, but it’s something for everyone to read. Have a go, you might like it.

First, read this. Then abandon thoughts of haiku and haibun for a moment.

If I were starting again I would start with tanka prose. These are like haibun in that they contain prose and a poem, but they are more relaxed.

The trouble lies with the poem. A tanka is a small poem (5-7-5-7-7) according to general wisdom. This isn’t true. That syllable count should be the maximum. You can write fewer syllables.

Some editors like to preserve the short-long-short-long-long layout, others don’t mind as long as it has five lines. It’s just a poem and can include poetic effects, though probably not rhyme. As such, it is free from all the baggage that comes with haiku, and all the conflicting views of editors.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

You can find tanka and tanka prose in Contemporary Haibun Online, Quail Eggs and Cattails. These are all available online. They are also easy to submit to if you want to have a go at being published.

Rather than listen to me, just read tanka and then practice. If I write ten tanka (which can take between twenty minutes and a week) you can be sure that at least one will tail off without being finished, and a couple will clearly be rubbish that can’t be helped by editing. Even after editing it’s likely that only two or three will be good enough to retain. That’s normal. Just keep writing and eventually you will get there. Don’t take notice of your internal editor until you have written a batch, or you will never actually finish a poem.

Eventually you will have enough to send off. Do it. You won’t be published unless you make submissions.

I send out a batch, one is probably accepted, the rest come back. I add another and send them out again. Usually one of the rejects will be picked at this point. I sometimes send things out three four times before I get fed up with them. By that time I usually have replacements written.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

Next – tanka prose. They are like a haibun but with a tanka rather than a haiku. There is some discussion whether a haibun should be in haiku-like language (ie terse and often slightly stilted). You don’t have that with tanka prose, just write what you like. If you can write a blog post you can write a prose section for a tanka prose.

Then write the tanka to go with it. Some people claim to write the haiku/tanka first then write the prose section. I can’t do that. I write the prose and then write a suitable tanka.

Here are some comments I had recently.

“I think the haiku are not nearly as successful as the prose in your haibun.”

“After a careful review of your poem, I regret that I have had to pass it on.”

“Unfortunately, your work did not quite fit the shape that the issue ended up taking.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get this piece. Is it me or is its meaning or intention too obscure?”

The lesson from those comments is that not every submission ends in success and it’s all par of the process.

Heron

So, to summarise – read, write, submit, expect rejection, read, write, submit . . .

Eventually it will work out, but expect some rejections to begin with. At the start the rejections can seem depressing, overpowering and inevitable. Eventually you will get an acceptance, then another, and it will gradually build up . . .

There’s a lot of other stuff tha goes into writing a good tanka prose, and eventually I might learn some of it, but for the moment I find that the best way to work is to write plenty, submit a lot, shrug off rejection and recycle the rejects.

The recycling is key to my writing – it saves effort, and when a reject is accepted it proves that editing is a matter of opinions and rejected work is not always bad work. And above all, it’s about hard work and  persistence rather than that ephemeral thing we call talent

Good luck.

Cormorant, Lowestoft, Suffolk

Another Trip to hospital

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Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

I eventually dragged myself o hospital this morning. Resentfully. Almost sullen. £20 for taxis, a chunk out of the middle of my day. A brush with inefficiency. A second brush with inefficiency. Home.

Inefficiency one – I was told, on reporting to he main reception, I was booked in and that I should sit in the waiting area. After an hour and not a lot of action I went to the secondary reception desk and asked what was happening. They started shuffling through a plastic box of blood test requests. Mine weren’t in there as I still had them in my pocket. I seems that the main reception should have told me to hand my forms in when I got to the waiting area.

It’s a good thing I asked, otherwise I might still be there.

Eventually, someone came along to do the testing. A blind cobbler with a darning needle would have inspired more confidence.

I know that my veins are hard to hit, and are getting worse, the more they are used. But I also know who is and who is not a competent phlebotomist. And who has an acceptable bedside manner. Telling me that her lack of success is my fault because I am hard to test is a fail in my eyes.

It’s something I was born with, not something I have chosen. I had hydrated this morning, exercised and worn a short-sleeved shirt. There’s not much more I can do apart from cutting off a finger tip and having a tap fitted.

I sat through it without wincing or complaining. I made lighthearted conversation to encourage her. In return, she complained and took three attempts to get the blood. It wasn’t helped by the fact the doctor wanted five tubes.

Last time I gave that much blood they gave me a biscuit and a cup of tea.

Once I have recovered my composure I will write a post about how to start writing poetry.

Tomorrow I have another medical appointment, which I am hoping will be the last for some time.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Looking For a Rest

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I had a look at Contemporary Haibun Online (CHO) yesterday. It is always worth a read, and I make a brief appearance. Regular readers may recognise the events from last year when Julia’s stumble in the garden became the subject of legends at the hospital, with one of the junior staff saying “Yes, I’ve heard about you.”

This month I only have one submission marked. Sometimes the calendar falls like that. I intend using the time writing and catching up with myself.  The journal in question only accepts one poem as a submission so the pressure is on to produce something really good. It always feels like only having one chance makes acceptance less likely, as does their policy of using guest editors.

Old habits die hard, and I am still inclined to write for an editor to increase my chances of acceptance. It’s hard if you don’t really know them, or their work. It often worries me when I search and can’t find anything they have written. I can normally find something online but not always.

The other problem, and the one which meant I missed submitting last time, is that the submission window is only two weeks long 1st April to 15th April. Last time I forgot that and switched on about a week too late. I’d better get on with some work.

Tomorrow I have blood tests. I hope they do them this time as taxi fares aren’t cheap.

Meanwhile, having let my hair grow for a couple of weeks I couldn’t decide on a trim, an electric shave or a wet shave. I went for electric shave. Bad choice. I really must go back to a regime of two or three shaves a week.

 

Trivial Conversation with Myself

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A whole day stretched out in front of me this morning . . .

I had pretty much the same thing yesterday too, and that didn’t really work out that well. I seem to have done a few things, but nothing that makes me feel good.

Today I go up, read WP, did comments etc, had breakfast, read and wrote some trivia before making lunch (Julia is at the tearoom this afternoon so we eat early), watched TV, drifted into a nap, dreamed about a gang of monkeys taking over the world, woke in the middle of a nature programme and decided to use the small hoover. It is currently charging as it was flat. Washed up and now, waiting for a charge in the hoover, I am typing trivia and thinking “I really must get a keyboard where the “t” works.”. It’s irritating going back to insert all the missing letters.

The original blog post was slightly more bitter than the one you see here but I decided to lighten the mood. It’s alarming how short a factual account of my day can be, and how simple it seems in hindsight.

I’m currently trying to access my comments, but I can’t. This is just another example of how WP are perpetually tinkering and perpetually making life harder. I’m seriously thinking of going back to a free blog rather than paying for irritatingly fault filled services. I would miss the photo storage but I don’t take many photos these days so probably wouldn’t miss it. People often worry about losing all their words, but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t. To a large extent, my blog is just disposable words. Any pride I have in the blog is in my ability to keep it going for so long and the fact I have attracted a dozen other bloggers of distinction to become regular readers.

I pressed the blue bell and nothing happened. I tried again. I refreshed the page and a shadowy version came down, then disappeared. Repeat. And again. Eventually I got them. Why does it take three attempts to access something that used to be there reliably for the first ten years I used it. Why do I have to press more buttons to read other blogs than I used to? Why do they now blank out the side panels when I am writing, I can write with things down the side. Probably “an improvement” I didn’t need in the first place.

Then I had trouble with the photos . . .

Why, why, why, why, why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hard Tack and Historical Accuracy

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1862 American Civil War Hard Tack

I’ve just been researching hard tack, the famous ship’s biscuit of the British Navy, though it was used by many nations in history. There was a claim on the internet that army hard tack from the American Civil War was the oldest preserved biscuit known. This isn’t a great age for a product that is claimed to be indestructible (and is well known to have been resistant to being eaten), so I had a further look. WW1 and Boer War biscuits are e common and there is a sample dating back to an Arctic expedition of 1875. It’s all a bit short of the 1860s, so could the American claims be correct?

No. Of course they aren’t. A more detailed search of the internet revealed a biscuit on display in Kronberg castle, Elsinore, Denmark (famous, I believe, for being the setting for Hamlet) is claimed to date from 1851.

1851 – Elsinore hard tack

And that answers my question, as long as my question is “What is the second oldest known hard tack biscuit in the world?” But it wasn’t. The normally reliable Danes have let us down on this one.

1784 Hard Tack

The oldest piece of hard tack I have been able to find dates from 1784. It has an inscription written on it,  “This biscuit was given – Miss Blacket at Berwick on Tuesday 13 April 1784,” and is signed “Bewick”. The signature is thought to be from the famous wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) and the biscuit has passed down the family by descent. Nine years older and it would not just be older than the oldest American example, but older than the USA itself. I’m still searching . . .


British Army Hard Tack 1914-18 – made by the famous biscuit  manufacturers Huntley and Palmers.

 

A Well-Oiled Machine

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Today, like a part in a well-oiled machine, I attended hospital, was processed and am now home.

The taxi, ordered for 8.45, arrived early. The traffic, where I had anticipated queues, proved to be free-flowing and by 8.55 I was standing outside the main entrance wondering what to do with the time until 9.30.

In the end I sat and waited, talked with one of the wonderful volunteers who stand inside the doors to help people, wasted the time until 8.15 then allowed one of the volunteers to push me through the corridor until I reached Rheumatology. There I was weighed, measured and tested for blood pressure. I have weight, height and blood pressure so was allowed to sit and wait again.

At 8.30, or perhaps a minute after, a doctor called me through and discussed my arthritis, my history of arthritis and which joints hurt. She did this by pressing them all, which was not my favourite bit of the day. I’m pretty sure you could make a musical instrument by linking arthritic finger joints to form a keyboard as a variety of old people went “ooh!” and “aah!”.

Then I taken to the door and pointed to the back of the hospital. Here they X-rayed my hands. They did my hands so they can keep a record as they deteriorate. They did my feet, even though I don’t have arthritis in my feet, because they like to use them for reference too. This involved being told to turn my knees and similar things. I resisted the temptation to point out that if my knees were capable of doing some of the things they wanted I wouldn’t need the X-rays.

I asked the receptionist if she could ring for a volunteer to help me, and one duly arrived, pushed by a man older than me. He was very good at his job and avoided crippling anyone as he manoeuvred through the crowd of idlers and assorted pedestrians that was, by this time, filling the corridor.

I rang for a taxi, it arrived five minutes later and shortly after, I was home.

All in all a very positive experience with very little of the aimless and unexplained waiting that used to characterise a visit to hospital.

The only fault was that, with it being a Bank Holiday tomorrow, one of the battery of blood tests they require can’t be done, so I have to spend another £20 on taxi fares and waste a morning to have the blood tests done next week.

The farming industry works 365 days a year and doesn’t pause for artificially applied holidays because animals still need feeding and eggs still need collecting. But medical staff cannot, it appears, do the same.

Finally, I wrote about it and pressed some mystical combination of keys on my keyboard that wiped out all my words. It seems to happen quite a lot these days and it is very annoying. Fortunately I managed to get them back.

Photographs will probably be from April in a previous year. I like April. I wish it could be longer.

I Dream of Writing Thunderbolts

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I had an answer to the last of February’s submissions yesterday – two poems accepted.  Today, I had the first reply for my March submissions – two poems accepted. That makes 15 so far this year. As a percentage my acceptances are about 50%, but I’m submitting to magazines that have resisted me for years in some cases, so I expect it. It’s all part of the hardening process.

Even the presence of growing queues at filling stations couldn’t bring me down, though it did stop me becoming 100% happy. The world appears to be at war and I can’t do a thing to stop it. I could write a poem, but that probably wouldn’t make the lunatic warlords stop the war, even if I could write a veritable thunderbolt of a poem.

My Orange Parker Pen

And that’s it. I sat up late two nights ago, grappling with last minute submissions. I then got up early to drop Julia at wood turning. Last night I also sat up writing. Then  I got up early(ish) this morning to take Julia to the railway station. I gazed at my screen for a few hours and did some basic tasks, went to the doctor, came back and more or less closed down. Couldn’t concentrate and eventually fell asleep a couple of times. It’s not been one of my finest days.

I have to be off early tomorrow morning too, as I have an appointment with rheumatology a 9.30. OK, not terribly early, but early enough. One of the qualities I had in youth was the ability to bounce back after limited sleep. I seem to have lost that.

The good news is that I only have one submission planned for April. Sometimes it falls like that. I can polish something that has been returned this month and try it again. I already have a piece in mind from the batch that was returned this morning.

In that quiet month I can catch up, regroup and, I hope, write some quality stuff. Maybe that veritable thunderbolt of a poem is waiting to be written next month . . .

Deep down, I want to be Dylan Thomas and write this poem.

 

 

 

 

New Plans

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10.38.

Last night I decompressed by sneaking in a late night post.

Today I rose unwillingly, took Julia to wood turning, wrestled with my car clock (I always forget how to reset it when the clocks alter)  and sat down at the computer.

A tour of bloggers, a few comments, check my emails and i am about to write a post so it isn’t hanging over my head. I will then make final adjustments to two submission emails and, after sending them off, I will, as I said last night, re-evaluate my life.

I am, once again, doing too many things for other people and not enough for myself. I like writing about coins, for instance, but I don’t want to write something new every week. The idea was that I would assist in filling the Facebook page with content and encourage other people to contribute. I managed the first bit, but the second has not happened.  We have people in the society who could contribute, but they want to pursue their own projects and won’t even do a few hundred words for the society. Well, I have my own projects too.

My first priority is family. My second is my writing. I like writing. I have had ambitions to be a writer since I was about 8 years old.  Sadly, the ambition never came to much, but in retirement I have a small window of opportunity and really don’t want to waste it.

It’s like the rugby club. I have just been reading a piece about a junior rugby tour and it has brought back all sorts of memories, some good, but some not. People tell you that you’re doing good work, but when you ask other parents for help you find they all have other things to do.

This is, I think, a good place to stop.

 

 

 

A Hamster Analogy

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In the car park at Carsington Water – storm clouds

Today I have blogged. I have been to the doctor. I have lunched on homemade soup (the last of the butternut and sage soup) and I have watched quizzes. I have also, to be fair, watched a bit of TV, snoozed, eaten tea and stared at a screen hoping for a miracle after wiping out 300 words in one of those glitches that sometimes occurs. It can’t be my fault entirely. I clearly delete my work with some random selection of key strokes, but WP really should have a better way to stop me doing it. Even Open Office, which is free, stops me destroying my own work.

In between all this I have also got to grips with sorting out submissions for the end of the month. That is tomorrow. Even as I group the poems for final transmission, I find I am still tinkering with them. I am now down to changing the odd word – the finest of fine tuning.

 

On Wednesday, when all the dust has settled I am going to rethink my life. There must be a beter way to work.

The poetry is going quite well, if I am honest, and I am happy to continue with hat.

The society web pages and newsletter, I am less happy with. It seems a lot of effort for little result and the bulk of the work seems to rest on just two people. As nobody is helping it seems fair to deduce that the bulk of the members aren’t bothered and won’t notice if I stop.

And, of course, I really do need to get myself better organised. However, saving a day a week by cutting out some of the work is a quicker fix than saving twenty minutes here and there by sorting myself out and not looking at Wikipedia.

Daffodils in Nottingham

After all, I’m retired, and I don’t want to replace one lot of work with another lot of work.

First reorganisation – buy a new keyboard, it’s taking me ages every day just checking all the t’s are where they are supposed to be.

And it just took me ten minutes to check that t’s is correct in that context – more time wasted, but it looked wrong when I did it.

Photos will just be random. I have run out of ideas. I selected April 2018.

Robin

Rats

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Squirrel in a bin – Clitheroe Castle

We had quite a lot of interesting bird and animal behaviour in the garden in the last few weeks – the regular appearance of greenfinches and goldfinches in the garden after a winter absence, the long-tailed tit that stared in at me, the squirrel eating samphire and, most notably, a rat chasing a squirrel. It was a small rat and the squirrel was quite a bit bigger, but it sill ran off. The rat tried to follow it into a shrub but the squirrel was up and away well before the rat could make a start.

I don’t like rats. I particularly don’t like rats when they come into our garden under the fence from other garden. We keep our garden as clear as we can from excess bird food and it annoys me that other people clearly don’t. Unfortunately we can’t  keep it clean 100% of the time, even though we only feed modest amounts on the ground. If rats come out in daylight, they will find food before the birds have finished it. I say rats, there are two of them as far as we can see. We aren’t exactly overrun with them, , but we don’t want more so we have to act.

Squirrel at Rufford

The trap I bought, and baited with delicious peanut butter has failed to tempt them. Spreading chopped chillies on the ground failed to stop them, mainly because the pigeons ate the chillies before they could do any good.

Today, I have netting arriving and we will be attempting to block the route under the fence.

Other choices include ultrasonic devices, and strongly scented oils.  I’m trying to avoid poisons (including baking soda variations), and the obvious cure – stopping feeding the birds.

I could also learn to live with rats, but years of keeping poultry has conditioned me to get rid of them. Same goes for the years of being warned of rat-borne disease.

No pictures of rats, so I went with squirrels.