Poetry Month is drawing to a close, and I’ve only managed to write ten or twelve poems rather than one every day. On the other hand, I did have one published. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Poetry Month.
I’m pleased to announce that Bright Stars: An Organic Tanka Anthology, Volume 2, is now available, and includes my tanka contribution, cirrus clouds and contrails.
Bright Stars features work by established tanka poets and by poets who have never had their tanka published before. Although Bright Stars is devoted mostly to five-line poetry, it also features several sedoka and mondo, ancient six-line forms from Japan.
In the words of editor M. Kei,
“Bright Stars focuses on the Japanese aesthetic of ‘akarui’—bright, light, illuminated, brilliant, shiny, brassy, active, energetic, noisy, loud, happy, drunk, passionate, wild, playful, vivid, and boundless. That doesn’t mean there is no darkness—black is a color too, but our dark poems are actively dark, not a sighing shade of grey.
Bright Stars is devoted to five line poetry—tanka, waka, kyoka, gogyoshi, shaped tanka, tanka sequence, tanka prose, collaborative tanka—any form based on the short, lyrical, five part poem originally from Japan. We welcome experimentation and variation from new and established poets—there are other venues that publish traditional tanka, but Bright Stars dreams of the future, not the past.”
For the list of Bright Stars 2 contributors, some brilliant sample poems, and other information about the Bright Stars project, please visit Atlas Poetica.
Bright Stars is a serial anthology and submissions are open until September 30, 2014 for contributions to future volumes, all coming out in 2014.
Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology, Volume 2
Edited by M. Kei
ISBN: 978-1496184245 (Print) 100 pp
$10.00 USD / £6.00 GBP / €7.00 EUR
$5.00 USD (Kindle)
Purchase Bright Stars 2 in print at CreateSpace. Also available in print and ebook at Amazon.com and other online retailers.
Chris Galvin 
Congrats on your published work! I decided to read a poem a day, in part because I’m woefully ignorant of poetry and I also because I recently won a whole bunch of poetry books. I’m going to try to read one in the morning and another one at night.
Reading a poem or two a day is a great idea. Congrats on winning all those books. What a wonderful prize! I suspect reading only one will be hard. I can never look up only one word in the dictionary…
Congrats a) on writing ten or twelve poems and b) on getting one published. A good April!
Thanks, Susi! I wrote the published one a while back, but I figure that because it was published in April, it still counts towards poetry month.
Bright Stars looks like a very interesting read.
Congrats!