In 2026 Jo McInerney will have a haiku echapbook One Side of the Moon posted on the Snapshot Press website by UK publisher John Barlow. It is a long-standing, highly regarded international prize. Here we release her third essay on tanka:
Tanka sequences: creating a sense of ‘shared composition’
by Jo McInerney
Catchment is one of the few venues that publishes tanka sequences alongside individual tanka. Why? Tanka sequences – sets of interconnected tanka – allow writers to expand the form’s scope and give readers a broader window onto what tanka can achieve.
American tanka writer Brian Zimmer makes a similar point in the first issue of the UK tanka journal Skylark (Summer 2013), suggesting that some readers underestimate tanka’s depth because of their brevity. Sequences, he argues, can offer opportunities for deeper appreciation.
This essay examines a tanka sequence titled Song Cycle by Australian writer Carmel Summers, published three years after Zimmer’s death, in Skylark Issue 5.1 (Summer 2017).
Zimmer sees sequences as a valuable extension of tanka craft and offers guidance on pitfalls and best practice. On the “don’t” side, he warns: “One cannot reach into one’s files and pull out related tanka, combine them in some reasonable relation to each other, and call the piece a Tanka Sequence.”
Conversely, he urges that “The tanka of the Tanka Sequence must be seen to rise organically to thematic coherence from a shared composition like the floors of a building.”
The recommendation that a tanka sequence should derive from the process of “shared composition” is both interesting and important. Song Cycle exemplifies this approach: the tanka are composed to interact with each other, resonating within their larger frame, rather than being awkwardly forced together.
The pattern of connections in Summers’ sequence emerges gradually. Below are the first two tanka from her four-tanka set:
Song Cycle
how many years
will they linger—
faint traces
the scent of vanilla candles
the sense of her presence
a magpie chick
tests its first hesitant notes
my own fledgling
now sings her own song
protects her own nest
The first tanka is open and enigmatic, posing questions it does not answer about a situation left largely undefined. Though it gives no indication of how long “they” will remain in their implicitly diminishing state, at the pivot, the reader begins to discern what haunts this space: faint traces / the scent of vanilla candles. These lines carry a gently elegiac quality, intensified by the closing phrase – the sense of her presence.
The possessive pronoun describing “her presence” partially identifies who has gone. The speaker’s voice is plaintive and meditative, leaving the reader to ponder the relationship between this anonymous mourner and the apprehended spirit that lingers through the faint fragrance left behind.
The second tanka introduces a dramatic shift. Whereas the first suggests an interior, probably domestic, space where the scent of vanilla candles softly persists, the second opens outdoors and is immediately active:
a magpie chick / tests its first hesitant notes
A small drama unfolds in the natural world as a fledgling finds its voice. The second half of the tanka pivots into self-reflection:
my own fledgling / now sings her own song / protects her own nest
Here the speaker discloses her daughter’s life and her own position as a mother. The daughter has left the original family home to assert her independence, singing “her own song” and protecting “her own nest,” with the implication that she may now have children of her own.
The speaker’s attitude toward this realignment seems largely accepting, drawing a parallel between human experience and the natural order outside. Yet the repetition of own – applied to both mother and daughter – carries a faint sense of displacement as well as empathy.
The interaction between these two tanka is a fine example of Zimmer’s concept of “shared composition.”
Initially, the second tanka seems unrelated to the first, but as it unfolds it suggests a context. The absence in the opening poem is implied to stem from a daughter beginning a new life. The anonymous voice of tanka one transforms into that of the mother, as the “her” of the first tanka is revealed as “my own fledgling.” Each tanka extends and reframes the other.
The third tanka stands beautifully on its own, but it is deepened by tanka one and two as it simultaneously enriches them:
along the top edge
of the closed shades
in her old room
a single perfect line
etched by sunlight
The poem takes a mundane image and renders it numinous. It moves with quiet precision toward its still point: the first three lines guiding the reader to where the heart of the poem lies.
That single perfect line of sunlight is remarkable, a quotidian piece of household geometry, like a tear-shaped light globe or the curved coping of a wall, holding within it an unexpected flawlessness.
This tanka would move and impress if it had been written as a stand-alone expression of the extraordinary within the everyday. Located within this sequence, it acquires additional emotional significance.
In the context of tanka one and two, the opening three lines reflect the mother’s grieving for her absent child; the blinds remain closed and the room unoccupied. This extends and deepens the weight of loss.
However, tanka three introduces a new dimension to what has preceded it and what will follow. At first, the etched line above the closed blinds suggest a border between one territory and another, a boundary formed over drawn shades that are themselves literal and figurative barriers. The light is kept out, memories of what has gone remain within.
And yet, the line is light. It will disappear when the sun sets and soften, fade, or shift as the sun moves through the sky. It is the most temporary of barriers. Poised to vanish should the shades be opened, it offers a quiet hope of reconnection.
In common with those before it, the final tanka functions independently and interactively:
packing my case
to visit her, I wonder
how she chose
the things she took with her
those she left behind
Like the first, it is enigmatic when read alone. There is a comparable openness combined with overt speculation.
The first two lines establish spatial but not emotional distance: packing my case / to visit her. The speaker is positioned as physically apart from someone who remains significant enough to be visited.
The third-line pivot – I wonder / how she chose – expands and intensifies the emotional tension, questioning the absent person’s motivation while acknowledging her agency. Though only half-formed, the implication is that her leaving was a conscious choice.
The final two lines extend this emotional calculation:
the things she took with her / those she left behind
These lines acknowledge that the severance is only partial, as the absent person carries with her a physical and emotional legacy. Part of what her former location gave her, she has deliberately taken with her. There is an affirmation here of the value and endurance of the life that had previously been lived.
In addition to its discrete function, it is important to recognise the role this tanka plays as the endpiece in the sequence.
It links most strongly with tanka one and three. Immediately, it confirms the reconnection suggested by tanka three’s fragile line etched by sunlight. While the mother’s imminent visit also makes it clearer that she cherishes those faint traces from tanka one – the scent of vanilla candles that recalls her daughter’s presence.
Grief is shown as not simply loss but as a continuance of love, and what the daughter chose to leave behind is a gift to her mother.
Before closing this discussion, it is worth noting the physical architecture of the sequence, the shifting locations within what Zimmer refers to as “a building.”
Viewed holistically, it appears that at least two of the tanka – one and three – are set in the daughter’s bedroom. Tanka three overtly specifies this location, and in retrospect it seems likely that the scent of the daughter’s candles would be retained most strongly there. The reader imagines the mother returning with love to her daughter’s room.
Tanka two is set outdoors, detached from the interior spaces of tanka one, three, and four; the reader must stretch a little to place it within the sequence’s other physical locations. Perhaps the mother could be imagined hearing the young bird’s cry through her daughter’s bedroom window.
Tanka four appears most likely to be set in the mother’s room as she packs her case. The parallelism here is important. The mother imagines her daughter going through the same process, deciding what to take, what to leave behind. This strengthens the overall sense of empathy and acceptance of life’s cycles as implied in tanka two and underlined through the sequence’s title.
Summers’ work reveals what Zimmer calls for – a process of composition that subtly integrates its component parts into an organically cohesive whole. Each tanka enriches and extends its partners while also standing securely on its own. The sequence shows how the form can accommodate both resonance and independence.
Summers’ complete sequence is reproduced below, as originally published in Skylark:
Song Cycle
how many years
will they linger—
faint traces
the scent of vanilla candles
the sense of her presence
a magpie chick
tests its first hesitant notes
my own fledgling
now sings her own song
protects her own nest
along the top edge
of the closed shades
in her old room
a single perfect line
etched by sunlight
packing my case
to visit her, I wonder
how she chose
the things she took with her
those she left behind
Carmel Summers, Australia
Skylark Issue 5.1 Summer 2017
Editor: Christine Everett