Stanley Park shaped tanka

→ comments welcome; critique not desired at this time

First published in Bright Stars, vol. 1 (Keibooks, 2014), edited by M. Kei. From the author's 2014 collection Fragments of Eternity.

This is a tanka, a Japanese form made up of five poetic phrases. Written in the usual way, it would be:

a grey day
outside visiting geese
honk memories
of a carriage ride
through Stanley Park with you

This one's tough to format exactly right. The shape comes out best using a monospaced font like Courier New, but I'm really not fond of them. I think it still turned out OK here.

This poem is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license*. You are free to use the work for non-commercial purposes, including creating derivative works, but you must attribute the author, provide a link back to the original work, and release your work under the same or a similar license. You must also provide a link to the appropriate CC license so others understand these rights.



*Please note that the license is listed as v3.0 in the sidebar. deviantART's interface automatically assigns this version and does not allow for manual changes. While most of my CC-licensed work uses v3.0, this piece is indeed licensed for use under v4.0.

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Eight of the twenty-four poems contained in Fragments of Eternity are available to read here at deviantART. The others are:

• Here Comes the Storm
• Night's Eye tanka
• Falling Tree gogyōshi
• Rural Oregon tanka
• Light and Darkness tanka
• Calligraphy gogyōshi
• Fragments of Eternity

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Concrete poetry is poetry laid out on the page in a shape related to the poem's content. For a totally rad example, check out Shadow Chasing by TwilightPoetess: