Eucalypt Distinctive Scribblings Awards

Eucalypt   The Distinctive Scribblings Awards

             

The Awards recognise two outstanding poems from each issue of Eucalypt,
selected and appraised by winners of the Awards in the previous issue.

Several species of eucalypts (gums) exhibit distinctive squiggles that result from moth larvae eating the live wood and leaving a scar that is revealed when the tree sheds its bark. This image of a gum with its insect-generated calligraphy, inspired the naming of the award.

AWARD RECIPIENTS 

Eucalypt  Issue 19, 2015 ancestral valley – the way prayer flags flicker light at dawn I carry this in my heart each time I leave home                 — Sonam Chhoki      appraisal horseshoe – the blacksmith’s hammer singing on the anvil beating out the rhythm of long-lost luck — Jenny Ward Angyal   appraisal

TSA Tanka-Prose Contest Winners

Special-event Tanka Prose Contest Winners

The Tanka Society of America is pleased to announce the winners of its first-ever tanka prose contest, held this 15th-anniversary year:

1st Place: Urszula Funnell (UK), "Checkmate"

2nd Place: J. Zimmerman (USA), "Ah Morelia" 

3rd Place: Claire Everett (UK), "The Window Poem"

Honorable Mentions: Jenny Ward Angyal (USA), "Gaps," and David Terelinck (Australia), "Carved in Stone"

Much appreciation goes to poet and editor Bob Lucky, who diligently served as judge for this blind-review contest. We're also very grateful to poet and TSA volunteer Susan Burch, who worked behind the scenes in helping us administer the contest, especially in building the judge's electronic file of anonymous entries. And a huge thanks, of course, to the sixty-nine poets from around the world who submitted entries.

To read the winning tanka prose pieces, please go to the TSA website. Note that the full judge's report, including contest commentary, will be published in the winter 2016 Ribbons. The judge's comments will be added after that to the website. 

—Janet Lynn Davis

TSA vice president & contest coordinator, 2014-2015

Advent calendars

decades

of advent calendars

my mother sent,

each marked with its year . . .

so many doors left open

~A Hundred Gourds 4:2, March 2015

the changeling

a stone angel

steps down 

from her pedestal—

the burden of wings 

others want her to wear

~A Hundred Gourds 4:2, March 2015

the empty shell

of a phoenix egg

sky blue

among the cinders

of who I used to be

~A Hundred Gourds 4:3, June 2015

raven, 

fox, or smiling lion . . .

I rummage

my wardrobe

for this day’s mask

~Ribbons 11:2, summer 2015

the river

echoing

across the river

the tune

my father used to whistle

on summer mornings 

~red lights 11:2, June 2015

no bridge

to that sunlit shore—

the stone

I skip across the river

falls short

~A Hundred Gourds 4:3, June 2015

step by step

I cross the stream 

on a fallen tree—

with open arms I balance 

childhood and old age

~Skylark 3:1, summer 2015

cleverness

one wayward iris
with its stem awry . . .
I reread
the scribbled comments
in my high school yearbook

~cattails 3: Sept. 2014

trying to free
a flailing black snake
entangled
in yards of bird netting . . .
the snarls of my karma

~cattails 3: Sept. 2014

sell your cleverness
and buy bewilderment—
midnight
finds me rapping
on the pawnshop door

~Bright Stars 6, Fall 2014

(Quotation in lines 1 & 2 is from Rumi)

Migration

three nights
I dream of home
with locked doors—
a woman hands me a chart
marking the depths of the sea

my path
littered with the bones
of poems
I couldn’t write . . .
a blackbird whistling

a wren calling
in the piney wood
teacher teacher teacher. . .
I read aloud
from a scarlet leaf

my quarry—
a poem without words 
dancing 
through the green glade
barefoot as music

a wisp
of thistledown drifting 
before me 
I linger by the brook
to pan for fool’s gold

clear notes
rising from my flute—
the gift
of water flowing
in a life without rain

~Skylark 3:1, summer 2015

signs

hot pink
handmade signs urge
Open Your Bible . . .
daylilies gone wild
bloom in the summer sun

~Atlas Poetica 20, Jan. 2015

preserve
our family values
on a billboard . . .
the homeless man’s sign
reads cancer in the bone

~Atlas Poetica 20, Jan. 2015

the child in me

an amber alert 
on my cellphone
at midnight 
the child in me 
goes missing in the dark

~Atlas Poetica Urban Special Feature “The Garage, Not the Garden” Oct. 18, 2013

border crossing—
at the foot of the wall
between them and us
a handmade ladder
and a child’s torn shirt

~Atlas Poetica 20, Jan. 2015

poppies

an old woman
stoops to weed her poppies—
I glimpse
the sprite of a girl
still dancing inside her

~A Hundred Gourds 3:4, Sept. 2014

changing light—
a splatter of poppies 
at our meadow’s  edge
the silvery ghost
of Monet at his easel

~A Hundred Gourds 3:4, Sept. 2014

voices

my tongue
leaden with wondering 
what they’ll think . . . 
tangles of knotweed
overrun the irises

~GUSTS 20, Fall/winter 2014

whispers
from the dark night
inside me—
this gossamer presence,
her silver voice my own 

~red lights 11:1, Jan. 2015

Tanka Sunday & Tanka Contest

The officers of the Tanka Society of America are pleased to share the following announcements: 

Save the Date: Tanka Sunday Is Back!

Join us on Sunday, October 18, 2015 (the last day of the Haiku North America conference), at the Desmond Hotel in Albany, New York, for another Tanka Sunday celebration. Tanka Sunday 2015 will have tanka readings, workshops, and presentations all afternoon and evening, plus a bookfair, group photo, and more.  Registration will be free  for everyone, including nonmembers (although donations will be welcome).  So mark the date on your calendar now, and watch for registration details later on our Facebook page and website and in member emails. Whether you attend the HNA conference or not, we hope to see you at Tanka Sunday 2015! Will you join us? 

Also, as a reminder, the submission window for the Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Contest opens tomorrow, May 1.

  

Cameo

A collaborative 
tanka sequence
         by

Jenny Ward Angyal
         and
  Julie B. Cain

forsythia—

in my old age

will I find again

flared skirts for a faerie host 

among its yellow petals

between hills 

softened in sunset fog 

one peach-stained spire... 

the only way to get there 

a tutu and toe shoes

a toadlet 

tiny as a moonstone

on my hand . . .

Queen Anne’s lace

ruched at my throat

my soul 

comes home late 

trailing muddy twigs 

and skeins of silver web . . . 

following fireflies 

~Bright Stars 6, Fall 2014

shards of light

shards of light
through a tessellation 
of leaves—
pieces of a puzzle 
my hands can’t grasp

~A Hundred Gourds 4:1, Dec. 2014

dreaming
I’ve been born blind . . . 
I poultice 
my third eye
with the meadowlark’s song

~Bright Stars 6, Fall 2014

stars

mirrored
in the pool’s dark eye
a billion stars—
tadpoles wriggle
in a reed-bed universe

~All the Shells: Tanka Society of America 

  Members' Anthology 2014

awakenings

the chorus
beginning at dawn
inside me
a thousand birds
all singing at once

~Ribbons 10:2, spring/summer 2014

daffodils
running wild
in the meadow
I whisper my names
to the wakening earth

~red lights 10:2, June 2014

Sonatina

light fading
at the tunnel’s end
I slip away
down the fluted passage
inside a singing reed

longing
to open the clear wings
of music
I breathe into my flute
a flight of butterflies

the murmur 
of wind-turned leaves
before a storm—
the soft cry of a mourning dove
echoes in my flute


~Skylark 2:2, Winter 2014

almost spring

a cow’s skull
of polished bone—
through the orbit
of the eye
this patch of snowdrops

~red lights 10:2, June 2014

the slow chant 
of chorus frogs
chilled
near to freezing
my hands fill with starlight


~red lights 10:2, June 2014

an inland sea

landlocked
I trace the rosy curve
of a conch,
sail by the stars
on my inland sea

~red lights 11:1, Jan. 2015 


ashes heaped 
in a walnut-shell boat
I sail
by the light of a candle
the caverns of the heart


~Moonbathing 11, Fall/Winter 2014

inlet

the shark’s tooth 
like a dragon’s tongue
filling my palm. . . 
bubbles of sea foam
on shifting sand 

~Atlas Poetica 18, July 2014

I am an inlet
of the only sea—
starfish 
lodge in the tide pool
of my being

~Moonbathing 10, spring/summer 2014

Lost Worlds

snowmelt

from mountain glaciers

blesses

Pachamama’s belly . . .

her rising fever chills me

breathless

at 13,000 feet

I blow softly

across two coca leaves . . . 

the ritual of wishes

twilight

in the Temple of Virgins

on Moon Island—

I leave an offering

of blood-red gladiolus

the Uru people

live on islands made of reeds

cut adrift

I reach for the shore

in this river of stars

~Atlas Poetica 18, July 2014

This tanka sequence grew out of a trip to Peru & Bolivia in October, 2013.