hundreds of starfish
lying embedded in sand
a guard points out
to the oil spill
from a wrecked steamer
bears are caged
and “milked” for their bile ...
hearing this
Mother closes her eyes
and prays for forgiveness
:::
i draw
a heart on the sands
the wave
fills it with water ...
if only
lengthening shadow
each second
the flower
holds on
to her fragrance
Kabir, a 15th-century Indian mystic-poet-saint, is famous for his doha: couplets of 24 sound units. Ignoring the sound units, I found that in my own way, I could pair tanka together to tell a story. We have tanka sequences, but there is something special about a twin tanka which says so much in a short span of 10 lines. To me, the link and shift that happens in the white space between the two tanka is sheer magic. Retaining the spirit of tanka in its form—I’m happy tanka doha is gaining wider acceptance.
is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, a mentor, an editor and anthologist, an artist, and a renowned pioneer in the field of haikai literature in India. She is the Founder/Director of Triveni Haikai India, the Founder/Managing Editor of haikuKATHA Journal, and haiku editor of Under the Bashō.
Her book of haiku and haibun Beyond the Horizon Beyond (Vishwakarma Publications, 2017) was shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize in 2019, and her book of tanka, tanka prose, and tanka doha The Forest I Know (HarperCollins India, 2021) was launched at the Jaipur Literary Festival on 13 March 2022. She co-edited Wishbone Moon: A Women’s International Anthology with Roberta Beary and Allen Crompton (Jacar Press, 2021). Kala’s ebook one-line twos in collaboration with Marlene Mountain was published by Bones Journal in 2015.
With 17 years of teaching, Kala has been instrumental in bringing Indian school kids, undergraduates, and adults to haiku and Japanese short-form poetry. She is the author of haiku, an introduction for children (Katha Books, 2010; reprint, 2017). She has organised eight haikai conferences in India since 2006. A speaker at many international haiku conferences, Kala conceptualised the three-month intensive Triveni Gurukulam Mentorship Program 2021, and the Virtual Utsav on “Haiku for Healing” in June 2021. She received the WE Trailblazer Poet Teacher Award 2020, from Women Empowered-India.
Kala was the winner of the Genjuan International Haibun Contest, 2012: An (Cottage) Prize for her haibun “The Blue Jacaranda,” and her haibun “On Slippery Ground” was nominated by Modern Haiku (51.3) for a Pushcart Prize. In 2021, she was guest haibun editor of Narrow Road (October), co-judged the haibun contest conducted by the Haiku Poets of Northern California, and served as the sole final judge of the International Book Contest for Women 2021 for haiku, haibun, and tanka conducted by Sable Books, USA.
