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Straggling into Winter
Kathy Kituai Highly Commended, IP Picks 2007, Best Poetry The great delight of the tanka is the jewel-like images it produces: how a bowl captures moonlight, willow twigs flaring at sunset, a poet wandering into a fog, pumpkin shoots, playing checkers when the doorbell rings. Poems that chronicle the progress of illness, the black butterfly of cancer, alternate with visiting wild birds and animals and moments of humour, even in the hospital, where crutches are stolen by hospital terrorists, musings on the Israel/Palestine tragedy, and the nature of old age and love. Kituai may be one of those rare writers who reject the idea that illness and death are things that have to be worked through and then left behind; rather, by beginning and ending with winter, she suggests death and loss are where we begin and what we work towards. There’s peace in that thought.
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ISBN 9781876819699 |
RRP: AUS$24 |
Poetry |
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Reviews |
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| Kathy Kituai is a skilled author and poet, with many years of experience writing in various genres. For this intriguing collection of new work she has chosen to compose a poetic journal in the form of dated tanka. Tanka, meaning “short song”, is the modern name for the classical lyric verse that originated in Japan more than 1,300 years ago. Conventionally untitled, tanka are written in Japanese—and now in English—in five unrhymed phrases to a flexible short/long/short/long/long rhythmic pattern. In the Japanese tradition, these poems have just thirty-one syllables in total. However, due to fundamental differences between the two languages, most tanka in English are composed with a lesser number of sound units, in order to convey the essentially light and fragmentary nature of the form. Straggling into Winter is Kathy’s charming contemporary English interpretation of this form, which continues today to be honoured and practiced as the epitome of Japanese poetry. Here we find some three hundred tanka, recorded under their respective dates of composition from 7th June 2005 to 6th June 2006. Kathy is an Australian poet, writing with consummate ease of her country and home environment. Australian icons such as kangaroos and eucalypts, cockatoos and wattle, appear in this collection, which in authentic tanka style links and blends nature with human nature. – Amelia Fielden, Poet and Japanese Translator |
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Kathy Kituai
Kathy Kituai has published a number of poetry collections and has been awarded numerous prizes, including the CJ Denis Poetry Award and the Annual St Kilda Competition. She has been the Assistant Editor of Bikmaus for the Institute of PNG Studies and Muse magazine and has served various organisations and festivals including the ACT Spring Poetry Festival, the ACT Writers Centre, and Arts ACT Peers Assessment Committee. She also shares her writing expertise as a private and group mentor. She has loved birds since childhood and aims to honour wildlife and humanity in her poetry.
SampleJune
7th June 05
news that the cancer
growing in your uterus
must be pruned—
I write a requiem
for cut flowers
settling in the ward
she takes her medication—
Rose is facing surgery
I am safely in bed,
facing a blank wall
encouraged yet again, to keep writing after reading
translations of Kawano Yuko and Kuriki Kyoko’s tankawith each collection
translated into English
tanka perceived—
fountains flowing in still lakes
ripple water drop by drop
Links
eNews 33: Commentary by Assistant Editor Mary Trabucco
eNews 34: Interview by Assistant Editor Courtney Frederiksen