Crafting Tanka & Tanka Prose

Posted on August 6, 2025March 12, 2026 by Colleen Chesebro

Let’s brush up our tanka & tanka prose writing skills. This is a reprint of the August 15, 2024 post.

tanka

Tanka are written in a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure, or s-l-s-l-l. Tanka consists of 5 lines written in the first-person point of view from the perspective of the poet.

Jenny Ward Angyal, in describing what she is looking for as tanka editor for Under the Basho, summarizes the prevalent view: “Each line is ideally comprised of a single, coherent poetic phrase. (tankasocietyofamerica.org).

Tanka Example

Despite its rarity, enjambment’s legitimacy as tanka technique has long been acknowledged, including in Michael McClintock’s introduction to the seminal The Tanka Anthology, where he quotes Geraldine Clinton Little’s poem:

         ah, summer, summer,

         how quickly you fade. I cut

         rusted zinnias,

         place them on a glassed tabletop,

         as if time could double.

tankasocietyofamerica.org

The Pivot

🚨The third line is considered your “pivot,” but let it happen anywhere, or exclude it. If you use a pivot, the meaning should apply to the first two lines, as well as the last two lines of your tanka. 🚨

Tanka are untitled.

Tanka do not rhyme.

First line capitalization is not used in syllabic poetry.

Punctuation is optional.

Tanka Pivot Example

soft hues wash the eye
these heady honeymoon days
on the horizon
sail boats softly drift away
carrying worn dreams with them

© AJ Wilson

The Pivot Explained

Take the first three lines of the example above. (on the horizon, is the pivot)

soft hues wash the eye
these heady honeymoon days
on the horizon

Next, take line three, four, and five together:

on the horizon
sail boats softly drift away
carrying worn dreams with them

🌻 The first three lines give you a message about a couple embarking on a life together (honeymoon days).

🌻 When you take line three, four, and five, you get another meaning. These lines possibly allude to all the years they spent searching for each other. The pivot allows the reader to infer a new meaning to the poem as a whole.

Tanka Prose

Tanka prose is written in the 5-7-5-7-7 or short-long-short-long-long five line syllable structure.

Tanka prose always contains a title.
Tanka and tanka prose do not rhyme.

Tanka prose combines two modes of writing: verse and prose. There are two forms of tanka prose: preface/headnote, or poem tale episode (literary diary, travel account, etc.)

The prose must stand on its own and not become purple prose. When the prose passage is overly poetical itself, the line between the prose and the verse is compromised.

At the heart of tanka prose is the crucial juxtaposition (to place close together for contrasting effect) between the prose and the tanka verse.

Jeffrey Woodward, “…uses the term segue to underscore the fact that transitions in tanka prose lean toward compositional harmony, not dissonance. This trait runs counter to the character of a closely-related discipline, haibun, where the borders between prose and verse are frequently disjunctive and oblique.”

Repetition of a Key Word or Phrase

Jeffrey Woodward suggests two common methods of segue are repetition and complement. The prose, therefore, repeats or completes in some fashion what is offered by the tanka and vice versa. (The Segue in Tanka Prose)

Jeffrey Woodward says:

“A simple and common technique involves repetition of a key word or phrase. In “Neighbors,” a short composition that compared the stubborn human spirit to a barren landscape, I achieved unity between the two modes by introducing in the closing tanka that word and image most prominent in the preceding prose: “stone.”

In “Needles by Night,” a work that describes a trip through the Mojave Desert, I repeated a phrase: coming into Needles Gateway to California

coming into Needles on the sly and under cover of darkness drunk still on the vacancy of that vivid glare some hours earlier tracked through

coming into Needles by way of the main street 10:30 p.m. a digital bank clock remarks for the record 112 Fahrenheit it reports soberly
coming into Needles 
only to pass through 
and quickly
into the wide desert 
of the night again

© Jeffrey Woodward

“Prose and tanka are closely joined here by anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of each paragraph and tanka. Iteration of a single word may serve as emphasis or otherwise affect meaning while the insistent and recurring phrase influences rhythm also.”

In tanka prose, there is only one basic requirement: one paragraph and one tanka.

The paragraph becomes the preface, and the tanka poem then reflects on the prose. You can reverse this with the tanka as the preface and then your prose reflects on the tanka.

There are many ways to create tanka prose:

Prose/tanka or tanka/prose

Prose/tanka/prose

Tanka/prose/tanka, etc.

Preface: an explanation

When we write tanka prose using the preface method, we give a factual summary, like the time and place, the name of the person we’re writing about, or the occasion we’re writing about in the prose potion of our poem.

The tanka portion gives a retrospective turn, or sheds new light on the proceeding prose.

Preface Example:

Taco (Tanka) Tuesday

Summer rainstorms battered the two pepper plants we planted this spring. Against all odds, the plants stand tall. The peppers remind me of Yule, one red, the other green. Peppers off the stalk—the gift that keeps giving.

It's Taco Tuesday
spicy bite of green peppers
a taste sensation
of late springtime memories
planting under the hot sun

© Colleen Chesebro

(This is a preface poem because it sheds new light on the prose. Memories are a great way to connect your prose and tanka. The details are minimal, but enough to set the scene).

Poem Tale: episodic narration

The second type is the poem-tale or episode written as a literary diary or as a diary of your travels or experiences.

In the episodic poem tale, the tanka is the center from where the narrative episode arises.

Poem Tale or Episode Example

Jeffrey Woodward, in his essay, Element of Tanka Prose, shares the following:

“A second example – this from Karma Tenzing Wangchuk – assumes a midway
point between the simple preface and the nascent narrative of the poem-tale:

Traveler’s Moon

Last night I left my room in central Tucson and began a residence
at the Dakshang Kagyu dharma center on the east side of town.
In fall of next year, four members of our sangha are scheduled to
enter a three-year meditation retreat in northern California. I moved
to the dharma center in order to make preparations.

Leaving one
temporary home
for another,
a waxing gibbous moon
my companion and guide.

[Wangchuk, 2004]

“Greater detail is afforded the reader by this poet who describes a relocation and
a reason for it, yet no other real action is described and so the tanka prose leans
back toward the basic prefatory style, despite traces and hints of narrative.”

Jeffrey Woodward, in his essay, Element of Tanka Prose, shares the following example of the elementary poem-tale or episode:

“The elementary poem-tale or episode is amply demonstrated by the following
work of Gary LeBel.”

Rereading Tsurayuki

It‘s almost midnight—tomorrow‘s Christmas. As I turn the pages of
the Tosa Diary I smell the sea and feel my cold soles‘ impress on
the shingle; I hear those ancient pines whose roots are splashed
by waves‘. The rowers pull hard as a woman intones verses for the
dead amid the long, elegant robes…I peek in on my sleeping
daughter, and then shut the door.

Like the long sloping lines
in Hiroshige‘s woodcuts, the rain glistens
under streetlights—
what strange coasts
our bows have touched.

[LeBel, 2008]

“Though this episode falls short of one hundred words, the reader is introduced to
a Christmas Eve setting where a vivid renewal of an acquaintance with the Tosa
Diary and that work‘s closing lamentation for a dead child awakens in the poet a
concern for his own ―sleeping daughter. The actual theme is never explicitly
addressed but is evoked indirectly in the allusions to the work of Ki no Tsurayuki.”

Other Examples

A tanka prose called simply “Sign,” was originally published in the first issue of Jeffrey Woodward’s Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose in 2009.

Sign

on wooden stilts
next to Father
I’m delicately balanced
and follow in his steps
picking peaches

The sign that bears my father’s name now dangles from the weathered arm of the post at the front gate. I take the shingle down, because I am his only child, and carefully wrap it in the blanket brought from home.

new line posts
and barbed wire
razor sharp
the buyer renames
our family’s farm

Toward a Theory and Practice of Tanka-Prose by Charles D. Tarlton: https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/cho-17-3-table-of-contents/toward-a-theory-and-practice-of-tanka-prose-by-charles-tarlton/

Charles D. Tarlton (link above) shares his interpretation of the poem:

“Notice how the first tanka and prose gives us a warm feeling from the author’s memory of his life on his father’s farm. The last tanka changes the tone the entire poem! It’s a blending of the past and the present. It is the juxtaposition between the last tanka and the first tanka/prose that make this tanka poem example memorable.”

More Examples

Complement: Prose and Tanka as One Sentence

Jeffrey Woodward explains:

“In “Souvenir,” I arranged the opening tanka and the prose that follows it in such a way as to allow the reader to read the whole as one complete sentence. The prose, in other words, complements or completes that statement initiated by the verse:

Souvenir

light falls from her hair 
onto a gold necklace 
and lapis lazuli
a carafe’s close shadow 
of cerulean hue
reminding me in autumn in this popular pub of you in high summer here at my side your eastern city far behind

Jeffrey Woodward, https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/cho-17-2-table-of-contents/the-seque-in-tanka-prose/

In Conclusion

Writing tanka and tanka prose can be a deeply personal experience. There’s a lot of creative room in this form, especially when you use the s-l-s-l-l syllable count for the tanka portion. Have fun & experiment!