Over on Cohost, I stumbled upon a poetry game happening in the #poetry tag! This one was started by F. Zoe Blackheart (cohost, telegram) using the renga 連歌 and tanka forms. Much thanks.
Here’s an excerpt of the chain (or one of the chains of responses, I should say) with the two tanka I wrote:
@F-Z-Blackheart:
Response well given
To compose and celebrate!
The world well is harsh
Yet, our lives are marked with joy
Raucous poets in each clade.
@leahsfiction:
Warm words soundlessly
Blanket the screen from all sides
And lift the quiet—
Smell that is no smell, of rain,
Forgotten, came, felt again.
@F-Z-Blackheart:
Talk without speaking
Singing without songs to guide
We build it along
Each laying a verse in light
That may well have been once ink
@leahsfiction:
New songs wind between
Old signposts of silk and soot
Wondering, seeking:
Flashes in the close, warm dark
Hailing those who’ve just arrived.
—reposted with permission (original on cohost)
Many more threads of the game can be found F. Zoe Blackheart’s cohost page. The general #renga tag probably has even more!
Notes
For my first response, I wanted to paint a specific picture of that moment of joy and community I felt while sitting in front of the computer screen in silence, smelling the petrichor from the open window. It had been a dry week, and that day it had rained for a few splattering bursts before the sun came back and steamed the damp away.
Smell that is no smell, of rain: I live in the Pacific Northwest of North America, where three seasons of the year it rains so much that the quality of moisture in the air and overcast light is taken for granted.
silk and soot: poems can be written on silk cloth, and soot is one of the ingredients in traditional inks.
Flashes in the close, warm dark / Hailing those who’ve just arrived: This is my homage to Li He’s “Five Verses, Voicing My Feelings (III)”.1
A cool thing I did in both tanka is allowing the final 7-7-syllable couplet to run into the preceding lines, despite the punctuation that splits them into separate thoughts—“And lift the quiet / smell”; “Wondering, seeking / flashes in the close, warm dark”.
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Specifically Maureen Robertson’s translation, titled “In Protest” in the anthology Sunflower Splendor (1975). “Lacquer grave-lamps greet the new arrivals; / Fireflies by shadowy tombs are flickering, flickering…” ↩︎