pi & anne

Now that I’m getting closer to sharing my tanka collection with you,  I thought it might be nice to reveal here and there some nooks and crannies about it.

I have never planned to publish my tanka, but I shared them with my friend Ken Slaughter. His favourite has been that one crow tanka of mine, and it is one of my own, too.

Read what he says about it!

“The title poem of this chapbook is a stunning twist on Emily Dickinson’s ‘thing with feathers.’”

As I accidentally wrote to another friend, apparently I don’t publish: I publush. It truly feels weird to me to tell you that these tanka might be called a ton of things, but for me they are foremost this: honest. I struggle with how I perceive the world.

I struggle with that ‘thing with feathers’, hope.

For me it is not a light, soft thing. When you continue to having to face emotional pain again and again as a child, hope becomes slippery, worn and torn with time. It becomes hard work to have a look at it without remembering the pain alongside. It’s no gift any longer. It has to be fought for.

a crow
fails to swallow
something with feathers…
my permission
to fuck things up

Which means I need that allowance to be human. My permission to fail. Kindness goes a long way, right? Kindness to myself means… I need to be allowed to be human, and struggle, and fight, and I am good enough. Although hope does not come easy to me.

This is why this chapbook’s title is “something with feathers“.

I will post more about it in the following weeks!