AustLit

'Early mornings, there’s a busy twittering, singing, squawking from all sorts of birds as they start their day. Late at night, I hear the sighing of the surf and thumping of the waves on Coniston Beach in the middle distance, and frogs kero-kero-ing in the garden ponds. In between, are my adagio days.' (Publication summary)

'The tanka form, in which these short lyrics on nature were composed, is that of traditional Japanese poetry. In classical Japanese, the expression meaning 'leaves', kotonoha, is a homonym for 'words'. Both are also written identically, in Kanji characters which join 'say' with 'leaf/leaves'. Kotonoha can also refer to waka, the pre-modern designation for tanka poems.' (Publication summary)

''In the tanka tradition, Amelia shares the personal in her life, yet offers her human adventure in a universal manner. Her readers will recognise their own lives in the specifics of the life Amelia has shared in her tanka. Also, she respects the tanka tradition of writing lyrical poems. Read out loud her tanka for yourself and/or recite for loved ones and friends so that you (and they) will hear the song-like quality of her verse.' - Neal Whitman' (Publication summary)

'A long while ago, I heard of an old Japanese tradition which associates the colour purple with the seventies, and endorses it as appropriate for wearing by people in that venerable age group. Then, when I turned seventy, I joined the Red Hat Society, founded in the USA in 1997 as ‘the place where there is fun over fifty’. This society takes for its motto, so to speak, a poem called ‘Warning’, by the UK poet Jenny Joseph (1932–). The first verse of ‘Warning’ begins thus:
'When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
… And make up for the sobriety of my youth!'
A nice synchronicity between East and West, isn’t it? Loving the colour purple, I quite often wear it, not just to Red Hat Society functions. I was born in 1941, and most of the tanka in this book have been written and published during my ’purple years’.'  (Publication summary)

'Autobiographical essays and tanka poetry written by Kawano Yuko and Nagata Kazuhiro to each other.'

'An extraordinary love story unfolds in these pages, more than forty years of a wife and husband balancing the reality of being in relationship with the truth of each their 'own-being' through the exacting discipline of tanka poetry. Day by day, they observed and concentrated their ever-shifting emotions into five-line capsules. It is not a fairy tale; all sides of love find expression here, including its loneliness, uncertainty and ephemerality even after decades of marriage.

'This record proves there is no 'ordinary' in the everyday of human life, not when it is borne witness to by poets with wide-open, honest hearts'

(Publication Summary)

‘Poems to Wear is a wonderful collection – brilliantly conceived, beautifully written. The editors and translators do the rarest of things: they bring the whole world of dress, fashion and its accessories to life. Part I contains haiku and tanka by modern and contemporary Japanese poets and Part II contains haiku and tanka by Australian poets. The poets are at their imaginative best as they build on their topics. It is accessible poetry, using variety and humour on the subject of clothing from both the Japanese and Western traditions. These tanka build an adventure playground where experiments in form and ingenious ideas are woven into the poetry about clothing. Headings in the Japanese section illuminate the chosen articles of dress. They collect observations from the world of attire that are rewarding and fun and present the reader with poems both thought provoking and a pleasure to read. At the same time, the poems combine humour with serious comment to engage and connect the reader. Masterfully crafted, intelligent, and full of heart, these tanka and haiku speak about the way our outfits offer a chance to express our style and individuality. The result is vivid work, animated and illuminated by the poets’ engagement with their subject matter, their attention to detail, and especially their skill and delight working with the forms of both tanka and haiku. Here we find clothing that exudes both fashion and function.’ – Patricia Prime, editor of Kokkako (Publication summary)

'‘Deceptively simple, the poems in All You Need Is Love touch the whole range of human experience: joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, enlightenment and illusion, love and loneliness. This anthology of tanka reflects the full spectrum of what it means to love, whether it be a partner, a child, a family member, friends, places or one's pet.’ - Patricia Prime, editor of Kokako, New Zealand journal of haiku and tanka.' (Publisher's summary)

''There is a world beyond the blue sky we only catch glimpses of behind the white clouds high above us. Yet this is a world we cannot and should not ever see too clearly. Drawn from the five different "realms" of the sea, the middle country, the underworld, the forests and the country of old, Noriko Tanaka’s third collection, From the Middle Country, is born of that human longing to somehow explore this unknowable space. We stand with Noriko in the Middle Country of our contemporary uncertain reality ever aware of the womb of the sea, of the underworld of the dead, of the protection offered by mothers of old and the chaotic magic of the woods. Cleverly blending word and image to compress her emotion into a deeply layered fabric of meaning, Noriko encourages her readers to explore how and why they are drawn to these other worlds.' - Dr Carol Hayes, Australian National University.' (Publication summary)

'A unique bilingual production, this anthology celebrates, in tanka poetry, the vibrant literary relationship between Australia and Japan. The book is in two sections: the first section comprises 105 tanka written in English by 55 Australian poets, together with Japanese translations. The second section showcases 94 original Japanese tanka, by 77 Japanese poets, plus English translations. The overarching theme of the tanka from both countries is 'music' (Publication summary)