A home for traditional Tanka
About Us
We are a small group of UK-based enthusiasts.
The purpose of this website is to encourage users to create tanka poetry written in, or close to, the classic 31-syllable format, and to provide a space for poems to be shared.
We’d be delighted to receive your tankas on any theme, including both traditional nature and personal subjects and more contemporary, perhaps political, poems.
Alan Hill’s poem could have been written at any point in the tanka’s long history:
The perfect crimson
ball of the rising sun burns
through the east window.
After a sleepless night, oh
what relief that the earth turns.
This tanka by John Valentine is more political:
They land on the beach
after their dreadful journey
exhausted and wet.
If I visit their country
I can take a scheduled flight.
If you would like to contact us or submit a poem, please send us an email at
If sending poems please include them in the body of the email rather than in an attachment.