A History of Tanka Books in English

M. Kei

Recently I started compiling a tanka timeline, curious to see what had been published in the West and when. I excluded translations from the Japanese except when I determined that they were works by poets located in the United States and Canada; my goal was to trace the history of tanka book publication outside of Japan. Many poets, editors, critics, and readers labor under the impression that tanka is a minority genre of limited practice and interest in English. My researches have persuaded me that the field of tanka publication is both large and inadequately studied and documented.

Translations of famous Japanese poets dominate the tanka discourse, but even so, these translations have been subjected to only limited critical analysis and publication. Domestic Western publication of tanka is exclusively the province of small presses, and even more so, of self-publication and assisted publication. (Assisted publication differs from vanity presses・in that a vanity press will publish anything they are paid to publish, but assistive presses reserve the right to reject unsuitable works.) Many of the small press and self-published works are of high literary merit and sometimes feature handsome physical production values.

By examining multiple existing bibliographies (none of which were complete or up to date), reviewing small press catalogs, reviewing book reviews in journals, reviewing author biographies in journals and websites, searching used book sources online, querying my professional colleagues, and where possible, contacting poets and small presses directly for information, I compiled a list of over 350 books and chapbooks, published either in print or online. The list is not by any means complete, but is probably the largest listing of tanka published in English or multi-lingual editions.

I did not include translations of books published in Japanese in Japan, with certain exceptions: I included books known to be by North American poets who published in Japan due to not having any other outlet. Some of these early books were published in bilingual Japanese-English editions, but some were probably only in Japanese. I have erred on the side of inclusion when uncertain.

While books were my main area of interest, I also tracked some of the tanka journals and organizations, but not to any great degree. The reader is cautioned that information about non-book resources is cursory at best and provided only to give context to the books. The reader seeking additional information is referred to TankaCentral.com, the free tanka megasite whose mission is to educate about tanka.

A major caveat regarding book publications is that titles known or believed to contain a significant・amount of tanka have been included. significant・was arbitrarily set at six or more tanka. Again, since I have not been able to directly examine most of the books, I have had to rely on secondary and tertiary information, so listings may not be correct. Oftentimes I had to simply guess; if a book included the word tanka・or waka・in its title, subtitle, cover matter, or blurbs, it was included, even though it was impossible to determine how much of the content was tanka. Likewise, in examining many small press catalogs, I discovered that small presses often did not identify the type of poetry within a given work. Since tanka poets often write other forms of poetry, tanka works that did not identify themselves as such have probably been missed.

In addition to the titles counted below, I have another fifty or so titles about which I have too little information to make even a guess about their contents. It is therefore entirely probable that this list will grow by dozens, if not scores, as a result of further research.

Tanka Book Publication by the Half Decade

Does not include works published solely in Spanish, French, German, or other Western languages. Mexican poets picked up tanka in the late 1890s, and various books were published, but this article does not include them. Neither does it include earlier French and French-Canadian books that did not appear in English translation.

pre-1900     1
1910-14       0
1915-19       2
1920-24       1
1925-29       1
1930-34       0
1935-39       0
1940-44       2
1945-49       1
1950-54       2
1955-59       4
1960-64       2
1965-69       2
1970-74       10
1975-79       16
1980-84       13
1985-89       9
1990-94       30
1995-99       81
2000-04     105
2005-09     67
no date         5

Total           354

As can be seen, 1990 was a turning point for tanka publication in English. Tanka publishing prior to 1990 was limited and erratic, but after 1990 tanka publication exploded and that trend continues to this day.

Prior to 1990, tanka publishing occurred in three phases: the pioneering phase, with only a handful of poets, the second phase in the middle of the 20th century, dominated by Japanese North Americans, the third or late phase, during the 1970s and 80s when tanka was going in multiple directions in the hands of immensely varied groups of poets. By 1990 the tanka community as it is known to day began to emerge, but it was not until 2000 that the first Western tanka society was founded.

The Pioneering Phase

The oldest book of English-language tanka, entitled simply Tanka, was authored by poet Ida Henrietta Bean and published in London, UK, by F. T. Neely, a well-known literary publisher of the day. Nonetheless, Bean's  work is never cited by scholars; efforts to track down further information about the book and poet failed. Interest in Japan was high at the time; Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, first staged in 1885, was an immense hit, both capitalizing on and helping to perpetuate the Japanese craze.

The documented portion of the pioneering phase was ushered in by Sadakichi Hartmann, a Japanese-born poet of German and Japanese ancestry resident in the United States. His 1915 book, Tanka and Haikai: 14 Japanese Rhythms, was an early effort to adapt these forms to English. He published an expanded version in 1926. Republished excerpts show tanka in 5-7-5-7-7 form on conventional topics, such as cherry blossoms. This is rather surprising because his works in the Western style are marked by an almost hallucinogenic quality which places him as an early Symbolist. Hartmann was a friend and colleague to many of the Imagists, such as Ezra Pound, and so was one of the influences that helped to shape modern English-language poetry.

Another pioneer at this time was Japanese-born Jun Fujita, a Japanese-Canadian photojournalist who eventually became a US citizen. His 1923 Tanka: Poems in Exile, is arguably the first masterwork of tanka written in English. He adapted the tanka form to English without regard for the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. He also wrote some of the earliest cogent commentary on tanka in English. Also published in this time period was the 1915 Verse by Adelaide Crapsey in which she established the cinquain form as a deliberate English-language adaptation of the tanka.

The Middle Phase

During the middle of the 20th century, tanka publication in North America was dominated by Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians. Tanka circles existed wherever there were Japanese communities. Many of these poets continued their writing and editing even while interned in Relocation Camps during WWII. Tokiji Takei published Areno (Wilderness) in 1944. Yoshihiko Tomari published Uzumaki (Water Whirl), also while interned. Tomari also published Kogen (The Meadow), a tanka journal, as well as several translations of classic Japanese poetry.

Later, in 1958 Tomari published another collection of his own work and also edited Ishokurin (Transplanted Forest), both in bilingual editions. Both books were published in Japan when he was unexpectedly called home on family matters and took the manuscripts with him. Both books featured translations by Lucille Nixon and others. Various other poets published works only in Japanese, a handful of which were translated into English at a much later date.

Lucille Nixon was the first American not of Japanese descent to win the Emperor of Japan's annual tanka contest in 1958. She was tutored in Japanese and tanka by Tomoe Tana, herself a previous winner. Nixon was a tireless promoter of tanka to American audiences, and she and Tana edited and translated the groundbreaking Sounds from the Unknown, copyrighted in 1963, published in January of 1964. This book is probably the first anthology of tanka deliberately published with the intention of reaching an English-speaking American audience; earlier anthologies had been member anthologies by various tanka circles. Contributors to Sounds donated copies to university libraries, thereby showing a conscious intention to promote and preserve their poetry.

1959 saw the publication of what may be the earliest English-language anthology containing tanka poetry, Japan: Theme and Variations: A Collection of Poems by Americans. It was edited by Charles E. Tuttle, founder of the publishing house that bears his name. The anthology published the results of a poetry contest open only to Americans on the theme of Japan.・The collection is noteworthy for the earliest appearance of Gary Snyder's well regarded The Stone Garden.・Tanka in the anthology demonstrate an immense variety in topic and form, with both counted and uncounted versions being used in diverse ways.

The Transitional Phase

Second and third generation Japanese-Americans did not adhere to the tanka tradition as ardently as their parents and grandparents, so tanka during the 1970s and 80s underwent a period of disorganization. The period was marked by continued efforts by Japanese North Americans, Orientalist tanka by non-Japanese, translation of tanka from other Western languages, and the development of native English-language tanka. Eventually the latter would triumph, but that could not be predicted during the 70s and 80s.

The 1970 publication of Hudson in Japan by Kisaburo Konoshima (a contributor to Sounds from the Unknown) was perhaps the last of the old school Japanese-American tanka poets. Hudson was not published in a bilingual edition until 2005. This makes it one of the few North American tanka books to be reprinted and reissued. The 1975 publication of Maple: Poetry by Japanese Canadians with English Translation by the Kisaragi Poem Study Group; Tomi Nishimura, Chusaburo Ito, Toyoshi Hiramatsu, editors, shows that the same forces were at work in Canada as the United States.

The 1970s also saw the first publications of English-only collections by North Americans not of Japanese descent. These were typically mixed collections of short form poetry, including haiku, tanka, sijo, free verse, and other forms, but occasionally tanka-only books were published, such as Tanka: The Lavender Nightingale, by Catherine M. Buckaway, Canada, 1978, predating Marianne Bluger's  famous Gusts by a full twenty years. Not all poets were approaching tanka from the same literary direction; 1970 saw the publication of Anne Waldman's Baby Breakdown: 13 Tanka in Praise of Dope and Other Poems.

Another element of the transitional period was tanka written in a strict syllable pattern 5-7-5-7-7 in English, often with deliberately oriental・motifs. The best known of these poets was Father Neal Lawrence, whose Soul's Inner Sparkle: Moments of Waka Sensations was published in 1978. Father Lawrence published several other books, and was and is very well-regarded in Japan, but his poetry does not enjoy the same reputation with English-language poets today. Father Lawrence's heirs include James Kirkup, translator, poet, editor, and judge.

Nonetheless, the 70s and 80s saw the first books by names that would eventually become very well established in English-language tanka: Michael McClintock and Sanford Goldstein. McClintock's 1972 Thief: Diary Notes, a tanka supplement to Haiku Magazine, predates his better known Man with No Faces collection of mixed forms published in 1974. Janice Bostok's collection, Walking into the Sun: Haiku and Tanka, was also published in 1974. They were followed by Pat Shelley's 1976 As I Go, and Sanford Goldstein's 1977 This Tanka World.

Goldstein, co-translator of Akiko Yosano's Tangled Hair (with Seishi Shinoda, 1971) and other books, was heavily influenced by Takanobu in writing autobiographical・tanka drawn from direct, lived experience, without regard for syllable counting, and devoid of Orientalism. Goldstein and Kirkup represent the opposite ends of the tanka spectrum in English. Although in their 80s, both are still alive and serving as judges and editors of tanka. Their work often appears in The Tanka Journal.

The first consciously historical North American tanka retrospective was Tomoshibi, published in 1978. Written and edited by Tana Tomoe, it was a tribute to her friend and colleague Lucille Nixon. Tana included sizable excerpts from the 1958 works Ryojin and Ishokurin (Transplanted Forest), which would otherwise be unknown. She was followed in 1983 by Jiro and Kay Nakano's Poets Behind Barbed Wire, which documented the work of Japanese-American poets in Hawaii, many of whom were interned during WWII and continued publishing tanka both during and after their incarceration. Jiro Nakano went on to publish several other anthologies. Later, in 1996, Juliana Chang compiled Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Poetry, 1892 - 1970. Thus a small body of preservationist literature was developed by Asian American poets and editors themselves.

At the same time, tanka was being written in other languages and taken up by major poets, but this article will touch only lightly on them. Noteworthy was the 1972 publication of Tigres de Oro, by Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986) in Buenos Aires. This was translated into a bilingual Spanish-English edition and published in the United States in 1975. Occasionally other bilingual Spanish-English tanka have been published, but Spanish-language tanka goes as far back as the 1938 cosmos indio: hai-kais y tankas, by the Guatemalan, Flavio Herrera (1895 - 1968), and even earlier to José Juan Tablada (1871 - 1943), a Mexican poet who traveled in Japan, France, and the United States. These and other early Spanish-speaking poets appear to have had a regional influence on the poetry of the American Southwest, but were not absorbed into the broader North American literary movement until much later.

In France, René Galichet and Lionel Le Barzig, achieved success as tanka poets, and Barzig proposed a form he called "tankème"・based on a pattern of 2-3-2-3-3 semantic units. Later, in 1998, Giselle Maya edited CATS - tanka, haiku & cat tales /CHATS - tanka, haiku & contes de chat. Working with Koyama Press in France, Maya has published a number of other books.

The New Wave

1990 saw the establishment of the first tanka-only journal in the English language, Five Lines Down, co-edited by Sanford Goldstein and Kenneth Tamemura. In the same year, Jane Reichhold (who had founded Mirrors Haiku Journal in 1988) published her collection, A Gift of Tanka, while her husband, Werner Reichhold, published his multilingual Bridge of Voices. Jane also started the Mirrors tanka contest, soon renamed the Tanka Splendor Contest. Tanka Splendor has been held every year since then. Reichhold's own small press, AHA Books, publishes the results in print and online. Other journals of the small poem, such as Lilliput Review (founded 1989), also published tanka.

The Japan Tanka Poets・Society, which had been established in Japan in 1946. started the multilingual Tanka Journal in 1992 to serve as an international tanka journal. The Journal and Society continue to this day. With a membership of 5000 (five thousand) in 2006, it is the largest international tanka organization and accepts submissions in all languages. It also sponsors conferences and symposiums. In 1996 American Tanka was established and is still in publication.

1992 saw the first publication of one the odder developments in tanka; James Kirkup's tanka transcriptions・(his word) of non-tanka French poetry. For reasons that make sense only to him, he decided to abandon the original French forms and turn them into English tanka. The first was French into Tanka, which has been followed by various others. He is also a mainstay of the Tanka Journal, a firm proponent of the 5-7-5-7-7 pattern in English, and has served as an editor and a judge of tanka contests and thus is in a position to make his opinion count. As the doyen of the tanka style exemplified in an earlier generation by Father Neal Lawrence, he remains popular with the Japanese but has little following in the West.

1994 was an important year for tanka in English. In this year, not one but two English-language anthologies of tanka were published: Footsteps in the Fog, edited by Michael Dylan Welch, and The Wind Five Folded, edited by Jane and Werner Reichhold. In 1995, Jane Reichhold discontinued Mirrors and began editing Lynx, a journal for linking poets. In 1996 the pace picked up, with fourteen books containing tanka published. In 1997, twenty-three books were published. Offerings continued to be mixed: retrospectives, 5-7-5-7-7, modern English tanka, anthologies, contest results, and so on, but the most common form of publication was the collection of a single poet's  work.

In 1998 the number of books with tanka dropped back to fifteen. 1999 saw the publication of twenty. 1999 also saw the establishment of Tangled Hair, Britain's only tanka journal, edited by John Barlow. It published five issues and closed in 2006, underscoring the perils that confront many small presses. (Blithe Spirit, the prominent UK haiku journal, also publishes tanka.) 1998 also saw the publication of CATS - tanka, haiku & cat tales /CHATS - tanka, haiku & contes de chat, edited by Gieselle Maya in France. She has published several French-English books.

During this period tanka was also tried by African American poets, forming an offshoot of tanka with little communication with the mainstream of English-language tanka. African American tanka poets include Sonia Sanchez, Jamie Walker, Lenard Duane Moore, June Jordan, Quincy Troupe, John Daleiden and Orestes. Many of these poets specifically named Sonia Sanchez as their inspiration, but few of them (if any) exclusively write tanka. Lenard Duane Moore is one of the few to publish in both tanka and African American venues.

2000 saw a new surge of book publication, with twenty-three books published, continuing the mixed offerings of the 90s. Nonetheless, works of modern English tanka came to be the predominant form. Publication sustained itself through 2001 with twenty-one books, 2002 with twenty books, and rose in 2003 to twenty-four books, equaling the old high water mark. In 2004, it subsided to seventeen books.

A new journal, Haiku Harvest, made its debut in 2000 and would run through 2006; it began publishing tanka with its second issue. Editor Denis M. Garrison adopted the innovation of publishing multiple poems by one author in order to provide a greater sense of the poet's voice, an innovation that has since been copied by some other journals. Previously journals had typically published only one or two, and rarely more, unless they were the featured poet for the issue. In 2006, Garrison closed Haiku Harvest and established Modern English Tanka.

In 2000, the Tanka Society of America (TSA) was founded. Originally it only published a newsletter, but in 2002 began publishing an annual members・anthology which continues to this day. In 2005 the TSA established a journal, Ribbons. It also sponsors an annual tanka competition. 2000 also saw the first tanka winner in the United Kingdom's Snapshot Press・chapbook contest. As of 2006, Snapshot Press is alternating between tanka and haiku.

The first half of the 21st century's first decade saw the publication of several major anthologies, such as Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor 1990-1999 edited by Linda Jeanette Ward, 2000; In the Ship's Wake: An Anthology of Tanka edited by Brian Tasker, 2001; Countless Leaves edited by Gerald St. Maur, 2001; and The Tanka Anthology, edited by McClintock, et al, 2003. The Tanka Anthology's forty-page introduction constitutes what is probably the most substantial treatment of tanka in English.

Along the way, various small and special purpose anthologies have been published, such as Angela Leuck's Rose Haiku for Flower Lovers and Gardeners, (mixed tanka and haiku) in 2005, and Grand Central Station Tanka Cafe's member chapbooks. The small size of typical tanka books/chapbooks makes the line between a small, private anthology and a collection by multiple authors rather hazy. 2005 and 2006 saw the publication of the Tanka Calendar, but this method of anthologizing proved short-lived.

The total number of anthologies containing tanka is now over fifty. At least forty of these are tanka-only books. They range in size from the very small but very professional Grand Central Station chapbooks to The Tanka Anthology, a hardback book with eight hundred tanka. Most tanka books contain a hundred or fewer tanka.

Critical analysis of tanka has not kept pace. In 2001, Acorn, a journal devoted principally to haiku, published a tanka supplement, New Moon: An Introduction to Issues in Contemporary American Tanka. This was probably the first time North Americans attempted a work of tanka criticism; previously there had been a French work, L'Art du Tanka Methode Pour La Composition Du Tanka Suivie De Tanka Inedits, published in 1957; and Tanka in English: In Pursuit of World Tanka, by Atsuo Nakagawa, was published in English in Japan in 1987. None of the tanka poets I queried were familiar with either L'Art or Tanka in English.

Just when it seemed that the market was starting to slide, 2005 broke loose with a new high water mark of thirty-one tanka books published. With 2006 not yet finished, at least thirty-four books have been or are being planned for publication. In 2005, Tanka Canada was organized with their journal, Gusts, beginning publication the same year. 2005 also brought the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society into existence in the United Kingdom.

Various websites and email lists have also been founded which serve as workshops and publishing forums, such as Tanka@yahoogroups.com, Tanka Fields and Kyoka Mad Poems, both at Googlegroups, and various bulletin boards such as Mountain Home and Haiku Hut. Significant websites for the publication of tanka include SimplyHaiku.com and ModernEnglishTanka.com, while TankaCentral.com is the new tanka megasite intended as a clearinghouse of tanka information.

Various additional print journals have been established, including the print edition of Modern English Tanka and red lights (USA), and Eucalypt (Australia). Various journals include significant amounts of tanka, such as Bottle Rockets, Moonset, Tundra, Nisqually Delta Review, and Wisteria (all USA), Paper Wasp and Yellow Moon (Aus) and Kokako (NZ).

Already books are being planned for 2007, including winners in Snapshot Press・ongoing tanka chapbook contest. The venerable Lynx is still in publication as an online journal. Tanka are showing up in other journals, and an interesting innovation in the tanka form is taking place in journals outside the small poem establishment. "Found tanka" are humorous tanka (more correctly "kyoka" purporting to find tanka in the natural utterance of some famous person (usually a politician), and republishing it as political parody.

Presses that have published multiple tanka books include the University of Salzburg Press which published Kirkup's books, AHA Books, Tiny Poems Press, Winfred Press, Clinging Vine Press, Black Cat Press, Inkling Press (Canada), Koyama Press (France), Snapshot Press (UK), Ginninderra Press (Australia), Post Pressed (Australia), and Lulu Enterprises (print on demand). Various poets have self-published multiple works as well. I am sure I have not exhausted the small press listings. The older, now defunct small presses are particularly hard to track down.

What is most amazing about the tanka revolution is that it is happening under the radar. Most poets and editors regard tanka as being a small genre with few participants. While it is certainly smaller than haiku in this regard, it is clearly a much more popular and populous genre than most people realize. Even editors who felt that the genre was larger than is usually acknowledged fell far short in their estimates of the number of titles in print, the number of tanka poets, and in the length and breadth of tanka publishing in English.

Likewise, there is a lack of awareness regarding the diversity and variety of tanka, with certain poets, styles, and journals being ignored as having little to contribute to real tanka,・whatever that might be. Yet, while there are any number of authors pontificating about what tanka should be,・there are very few authors observing tanka as it is.・Yet clearly tanka in English can only be understood if it is studied in the wild・so to speak. One cannot understand tanka any more than one could understand monkeys by examining only those specimens kept in zoos.

The author welcome additions, corrections, and suggestions. This article is merely a launchpad for the exploration, analysis, and appreciation of tanka written in English.

~K~

・M. Kei
30 October 2006