Longer poems & tanka can be submitted from today until 21 May for our 6th issue! You will also be able to click on Tanka Tones, from 28 March, for recorded readings. As our editor, Rodney Williams was interviewed recently on 3CR Community Radio (855 AM) in Melbourne: https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/discovering-tanka He makes further observations on tanka below –
Defining places & poetry, gunpowder & put-downs, all derived from snipe
by Rodney Williams
In Edition 2 of Catchment – Poetry of Place (from June 2024), we were pleased to publish this expansive piece by one of a set of tanka poets hailing from Canberra, Tony Steven Williams:
Latham’s snipe
lifting off from wetlands
bound for Hokkaido
back to their birthplace
GPS tags on board
Jerrabomberra Wetlands, ACT.
Poet’s note: Latham’s snipe is a shorebird species that breeds in Japan and migrates to Eastern Australia for the austral spring-summer.
https://www.bawbawartsalliance.org.au/bcms/tony-steven-williams-6/
Over coming months in 2026, listeners to a new Catchment project called Tanka Tones will have the opportunity to hear a recorded reading of this fine piece, as presented among a wide range of poems – offered as audio files – to showcase shorter verse published in our first five editions.
The process of selecting & recording this particular work about Latham’s snipe happens to have coincided with a preceding project, wherein I reflected upon tanka in broad terms, finding a starting-point in an iconic piece of early waka by the Japanese master poet Saigyō (1118-1190), likewise inspired by the seasonal migrations of this same species of bird.
*************************
Loaded up now with tracking technology which leaves no doubt about their movements (as highlighted by Tony Steven Williams), snipe have long since been wetlands dwellers, previously giving inspiration to two of the most revered of all Japanese poets in haiku, Basho & Issa.
As the location scientifically identified as a place where migratory snipe would be heading, on leaving Australia, Hokkaido is situated at the most northerly point along the archipelago of islands compromising contemporary Japan: it acts as a magnet these days for humans devoted to skiing as well.
Famous as a literary traveller, the haiku master Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is renowned for taking that narrow road to the deep north, long ago, yet he did not cross the sea as such to tread upon even more northerly soil.
As is widely known, Basho composed verse in the course of travelling on foot, or sometimes by horse, begging for food as he went, while acting as a poetry-writing tutor & lay Zen practitioner, accompanied by others who could be regarded as disciples.
Within the Seventeenth Century, Basho followed an example – set long before – by a poetic priest, likewise seen as being among the most deeply respected figures in Japanese literature.
Saigyō has been identified as having observed snipe at Oiso, prompting this Buddhist monk to write one of the most iconic examples of what used to be called waka (now known as tanka).
The location involved is placed in the Naka District, in Kanagawa, south-west of modern-day Tokyo, meaning it is over a thousand kilometres below Hokkaido, as identified by GPS devices, a detail emerging in research carried out by our current-day tanka poet Tony Steven Williams.
*************************
As a self-professed bird-lover myself, often focussing upon such subject matter in writing in Japanese-based verse-forms, my own poetic connection to the snipe as a species dates back over thirteen years, to a Special Feature I edited for the American tanka website Atlas Poetica.
Lovers of modern poems in this form in English may recall how that revered periodical was edited by M Kei, a foremost poet/ publisher in this poetic sub-genre, committed to focussing on a sense of place: indeed, that precedent played a significant part in my own thinking when setting up Catchment, as a journal also giving a home to verse embracing a sense of locale.
Some readers may even recall that such a featured piece involved a guest editor choosing only one poem per contributor, with a total of just twenty poets permitted to have work selected.
Tanka came to me from a range of countries & continents around the globe, including from distinguished editors & poets, featuring an array of species of bird, observed in a variety of locations – from towns & farmlands, to seascapes & forests – with each flighted creature depicted needing to be identified both by its scientific name & by one in common usage.
While that project, called Snipe Rising from a Marsh – Birds in Tanka, is – alas – no longer accessible online (with all digital dimensions to Atlas Poetica having since been taken down), it was a pleasant surprise to find a small remnant of it appearing subsequently, within a keynote posting made by Kei, examining larger questions attached to tanka as a verse-form in English:
https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2016/05/to-lighthouse-problem-of-tanka.html
As I had already outlined myself (in my foreword for Snipe Rising), M Kei explains that Buddhist monks were expected to refrain from showing their feelings, yet Saigyō still could not stop himself from being emotional, once he was confronted by the departure of a beloved bird, in a context which still proves resonant to readers these days:
even someone
free of passion as myself
feels sorrow:
snipe rising from a marsh
at evening in autumn
Saigyō (33)
Kei’s own endnote – 33. Saigyō. In ‘Snipe Rising from a Marsh.’ Rodney
Williams, ed. and trans. Atlas Poetica Special Features. 2012.
http://atlaspoetica.org/?page_id=490> Accessed 17 September 2012.
*************************
Although M Kei has used the abbreviation ‘trans.’ in that 33rd footnote of his, I did not in fact represent myself as having translated this remarkable piece of waka by Saigyō as such, stating only that I had given my own ‘rendering’ instead.
In truth, the version quoted by the Atlas Poetica editor owes debts to other English Language versions of that iconic snipe-based poem.
Frankly, over a decade later, however, I am still happy to stand by my own variations, regarding cadence & pacing, with their merits endorsed through being chosen for inclusion in Kei’s paper.
In terms of line-length, the shape of this ‘snipe rising’ piece is shorter-longer-shorter-longer-longer, a structure widely admired in tanka, if not necessarily regarded as obligatory any more.
Readers of Japanese verse-forms may be well acquainted with the idea of a break – or kireji – in such a poem: here, we see an emotive shift from focussing on human nature, toward the natural world, leaving space for readers to reflect on the significance of such a juxtaposition.
After all, the term ‘tanka’ can be translated as meaning a ‘little song’, often showing feeling: lyrically expressed, Saigyō’s sense of loss is deep-seated & self-defining, while proving to be heart-breaking for readers across time, right through into this Twenty-first Century.
*************************
My broader investigations here have confirmed that noteworthy poets writing in English have focussed upon snipe, across recent centuries, headed by John Clare, yet also including Ted Hughes & Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage & Matthew Gellman: each employs a Western verse-form of some sort, of course, as against haiku or tanka.
All the same, one challenging dimension to emerge from my work on this project has been to find that snipe gain a degree of coverage on the Internet as worthy targets for human hunters.
In clicking on links to snipe in literature, I have happened upon a posting by an unidentified blogger which includes Saigyō’s waka, only to find that a second release there offers this most resonant piece by another of Japan’s most respected poets as well:
all people must
grow old…
the snipe rises
– Issa, 1804
The version quoted comes to us thanks to an American expert on haiku, David G. Lanoue, who specialises in translating the work of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827):
Readers conversant with Japanese literature will recognise how ‘all people must’ is true to the compassionate spirit central to the writing of such a revered haiku master: Issa is renowned for showing empathy towards creatures which are vulnerable, as well as to humans who face challenges (in this case, with ageing).
Imagine my surprise – on finding that first blog – to see both of its postings headed by the one visual image (seemingly historic in origin), depicting a hunter firing a gun at birds on the wing.
From all we understand about Saigyō or Issa, the last thing imaginable would be the notion of either one loading a bow with an arrow, beside marshland, in pursuit of snipe as a game bird.
*************************
Devotees of Japanese verse will know how a sense of seasonality has been seen as integral to true haiku (still far more crucial, in English, than any counting of syllables, please let me add).
Those with a closer sense of involvement in literary traditions from Japan will be aware that specific imagery – called kigo – will automatically connote a certain time of year: any reference to cherry blossoms within Japanese writing must naturally locate that piece of poetry in Spring.
Less obviously to some Western readers, the moon can be seen as denoting autumn, in Japan, whereas (others might say) we can easily spot our lunar satellite on clear nights, all year round.
While poets may infer the time of year through use of kigo-based imagery, other poems will simply name a season directly, as is the case with Saigyō’s identification of an autumn evening.
With the weather set to worsen with the onset of winter, the snipe described seem to be commencing an annual migration south – as already noted, the poet observer is human enough to feel a sorrow which a Buddhist monk was not generally entitled to indulge: perhaps the birds in themselves are revered, such that seeing them depart is cause enough for becoming down at heart.
Potentially a deeper sense of sadness is prompted all the more by having such a bird-based exodus portend how the weather is due to worsen, with winter bound to usher in deeper challenges, especially in earlier days – bringing a need to work or travel outdoors, despite wind, rain & snow; maybe giving less food, lower in quality; no doubt making it harder to keep warm & dry under suitable shelter; most likely causing extra hardships in health, with coughs & colds.
Inherent to minimalist Japanese verse-forms is this capacity for inference: implying possibilities beyond the brevity of the poem itself; prompting readers to reflect; offering imaginative freedom in leaving room for wonder; giving the writing a quality expounded by Basho himself, known as karumi or ‘lightness of touch’; letting readers of haiku & tanka fill spaces mentally & emotionally between the lines; effectively completing such a short poem as its reader, as some would say…
Likewise we must note that ‘evening’ is identified directly, being a precursor to darkness: potentially of the heart, as much as night-time in a literal sense.
That most revered of haiku poets – Basho – also gives a strong indicator of where his own poem about a snipe is placed, within the yearly cycle, with the harvest a clear form of kigo.
Within So Many Birds – 30 Basho haiku and 10 renku about birds: Autumn Birds we find:
After harvest –
from field of early rice
call the snipe
Accessible via the link which follows it, the piece of commentary given below comes from Jeff Robbins, as a translator of Basho’s haiku currently residing in Japan:
‘Harvest leaves the field an expanse of muddy puddles and cut off rice stubble. Snipe are marsh-dwelling birds; they have a long flexible bill useful for getting at bugs and worms… (In) an area of inhospitable rice fields, someone gives the snipe a gift. One patch of thick inedible rice plants has been magically transformed into lovely wet mud…’
https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-description.php?ID=1525957618
*************************
By extension, another point which becomes all the more disturbing – in relation to our beloved snipe – is the fact that its name has come to be used in disparaging ways.
In Othello, Shakespeare has employed the word ‘snipe’ to describe the character Roderigo as being foolish & gullible: arguably this is an oddity in itself, when ornithologists, photographers & bird-shooters alike will agree that the snipe is a creature which cleverly protects itself in the wild, not only through having plumage that blends in well with reeds in a marsh, but by showing awareness of danger too, taking care not to reveal itself readily in its own behaviour.
Just as negative, but with far clearer connections, the etymology of the word sniper – as used In modern warfare – stems back directly to the challenges involved in seeking to shoot such a bird, rather than any danger posed by snipe themselves.
In feeding, snipe do indeed place fellow organisms at risk, but their prey is no higher up the food chain than the likes of those ‘bugs and worms’ found in muddy ground.
As readers would know all too well, a military sniper uses tactics based on concealment to pick off enemy while firing from a position with minimal visibility, at a distance, under cover.
Regarded as dishonourable in the Boer War in South Africa, late in the 19th Century, sniping became a devastating strategy in trench warfare on the Western Front in World War One, of course, with shooters concealed in shell-holes in no-man’s-land.
Even in the calmer atmosphere of general conversation, a person seen as guilty of sniping is one prone to making snide remarks which belittle others: perhaps the probing nature of the bird’s bill has been held against it here, misconstruing such a quality in a critical, unjust way.
This multi-faceted negativity in vocabulary is deeply at odds with the empathetic view shared by haiku masters of the past & bird-lovers across the ages, all honouring so elegant a creature, solitary & elusive, seen as doing no harm as a seasonal migrant, instead helping to maintain an ecological balance within a water-based biome, despite risk: even if the departure of snipe was emotive for Saigyō; before proving to be thought-provoking for Tony Steven Williams.
Our ACT-based tanka poet & I share a couple of larger points in common, beyond happening to bear the same family name, while likewise being Australian writers of poetry in both Eastern & Western forms.
Moreover, each of us values this species of bird profoundly, not only in itself, but as a living symbol of a closer cultural connection between Australia & Japan.
As reported upon in a posting on the Australian Haiku Society website (as written by group leader Rob Scott, given in the link below), I made a presentation about tanka to the Fringe Myrtles haiku group in Melbourne, late in 2025:
https://australianhaikusociety.org/2025/10/29/report-on-the-fringe-myrtles-meeting-october-2025/
Therein, I dared to wonder whether the very birds Saigyō was saddened to witness leaving – from a marsh, centuries ago – might have been bound for the eastern edge of what has since come to be called Australia: just as tanka (and its smaller, more celebrated sibling, haiku) have also migrated to what Tony Steven Williams might call this ‘austral’ continent; as part of a worldwide cultural phenomenon which – like Latham’s snipe – has its ‘birthplace’ in Japan.
Rodney Williams
Editor
Catchment – Poetry of Place
Baw Baw Arts Alliance
Gunaikurnai Country
West Gippsland, Victoria, Australia
*************************
Acknowledgements: My heartfelt gratitude goes to David G. Lanoue, Jeff Robbins & Tony Steven Williams for giving permission to quote verbatim from their writing; whether as translations or commentary related to the work of Japanese haiku masters; or as the text of new, original verse. Support shown by Rob Scott is appreciated too. While my efforts to contact M Kei – as the former editor of Atlas Poetica – have met with no success, my only quoting from him directly (beyond copying in URL’s) has taken the form of reproducing his footnote crediting me with rendering Saigyō’s ‘snipe rising’ waka into English.