Contest Description
Tanka - The Pivot
Just ONE of many poetry devices when writing tanka.
The Dreaded Contest RULES:
Do's:
1. The Pivot - the successful incorporation of the pivot, will be the MAIN feature by which this contest will be judged. Ie the CONTENT of the poem
2. Layout/presentation: Please use indentation, i s o punctuation
3.Date your entry, please
Don't:
1. Center your tanka
2. Use punctuation - unless utterly necessary
3. Capital letters - unless proper nouns
The usual T & C apply for ALL contests run on PS
1st - 3rd: Glory
4th - 10th: HM
Tanka (“short poem”) is a genre of a classical Japanese poem of five lines: 5-7-5-7-7 (or less), unrhymed and untitled. Tanka poems are written about strong emotions, lending an air to it of a personal diary. From tanka’s long history – over 1300 years recorded in Japan – the most famous use of the poetry form of tanka was a secret message between lovers. Its main feature is that, in expressing the gamut of feelings in a simple form, it must contain a suggestiveness felt beyond the words.
The first 5-7-5 sounds (not syllables) is called the kami-no-ku (upper phase) and the second 7-7 sounds, shimo-no-ku (lower phase). The fifth phrase (line) is the punch line and important! No capital letters are used and some publishers prefer no punctuation. It uses images instead of an analytical approach, which may make it appear fragmented. NB It is not a sentence chopped into five lines.
The first two lines describe the image:
spiky sea urchins
sparkling in jeweled rock pools
The final lines are a reflection of what this image has brought to your mind:
splintering shadows
selective in fierce sunlight
children fishing for treasure
Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response. This is the opposite of a Haiku, which is objective.
Consider turning your third line into a pivot line, that is, a line that refers both to the upper phase and the bottom phase, so that either way they make sense grammatically, but may change in meaning when read with each phase. The term for this technique is zeugma.