Poem in Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal

Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal (Issue 25, 2018) has just published Andrew’s poem “Chimney Tree”.

Needless to say, his poem is a tanka, a poem written in a traditional Japanese form of five lines arranged in 5.7.5.7.7 syllables respectively. (Andrew views this strict syllabic structure as the ideal and strives to duplicate it, although many tanka poets writing in English today disregard it altogether.)

Eucalypt‘s style is to dispense with titles, capital letters and full-stops. Accordingly, Andrew’s tanka was published in the journal as follows:

it’s a chimney tree,
that motley-barked wandoo with
its hollow branches—
come twilight, little bats will
waft from those flues like ashes

            © Andrew Lansdown