pi & anne

Shhhhhh—I have been very busy the last days, which included ordering some author copies, and something even greater. I have another gift for you… So.

What I did the last two weeks was recording all tanka for you, and the result is 33 minutes of tanka in a row! Anybody who has ordered the book just needs to hit me up in DMs or send me an email or a message on my blog or via my link.tree, and I will provide a link to a mp3 file which you can listen to directly or download to enjoy later…

I decided to not add the link in the book. Two reasons: hopefully this book will be sold even after my death, and I cannot be sure how this audio can be provided then. Second: I don’t have the best recording technique and equipment (though I plan to change that!), so the recording is not in stereo. Still, I did my best to offer you a well performed and arranged reading, and I read each tanka twice.

I wouldn’t sit here and write about my own chapbook of tanka if there hadn’t been Ken Slaughter.

We connected on Instagram, and I initially wrote asking him if he could help me with learning more about haiku and tanka, totally oblivious to who he is and his in-depth knowledge about tanka… but of course we got to talk about tanka. And exchanged tanka. And edited tanka. Then I wrote a ton of haiku. And one day he reminded me of the tanka, and if I wouldn’t submit them… and I was like… I have so many! They are enough to create a chapbook. Let’s do a chapbook instead. And here is an excerpt of a tanka I dedicated to Ken… and that’s how I feel about tanka:

five lines
the outstretched fingers
of an open hand

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My book will be AVAILABLE END OF MARCH, EARLY APRIL — and I will keep you up to date about international availability ❤️
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