Sunday, September 8, 2024

#TankaTuesday 24 Seasons Syllabic #Poetry Challenge - #Syllabic #poem #poetrycommunity #seasonalKigo #Kigo #seasons #WhiteDew #tankaprose #MiddleEarth #hobbits @YvetteMCalleiro


Hello, beautiful readers! I completely missed participating in last week's #TankaTuesday 24 Seasons Syllabic Poetry Challenge. I had something to do every day after school, and I'm sticking to my commitment to go to bed at a decent time so I can get eight hours of sleep every night. Sleep is vital to health, and I treasure it. My weekend was spent visiting my parents at their new beachside condo about two hours away from me, so I just didn't have time to write.

This week hasn't been any less busy - still had something to do every day after work, but today has given me a few moments to rest, so I decided to play with poetry. For this week's challenge, Colleen Chesebro invited us to write a tanka prose for the new season of White Dew. She shared a list of kigo words that would go with this season, and to my pleasant surprise, Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins' birthdays are in this season, so I knew instantly what I would write about!

A tanka prose is a combination of one paragraph and one tanka on the same subject. There are two different kinds - preface (explanation) or poem tale (episodic narration). My kigo words are bolded and italicized.

(courtesy of @StockSnap on Pixabay)

I first fell in love with JRR Tolkien's fantasy world when my seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, read The Hobbit to us. Her animation and excitement throughout the story made me fall in love with the world despite giving me a gripping fear of spiders that still resides within me. After that story, I couldn't get enough and eventually devoured The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now, The Rings of Power airs on Prime, and I am hooked! The battle between good and evil has always teetered on a thin line within this world, especially since evil calls to each character so uniquely. But the hobbits - they truly are the epitome of what all people should try to exemplify.

Middle Earth hobbits
living off the land with joy
accepts adventure
danger, evil run amok
Bilbo Baggins' pure heart wins


Would you like to try your hand at writing a tanka prose? Join us here.