Halfway through submissions for Catchment 6, our tanka co-editor Jo McInerney looks at a responsive interchange between two leading Australian tanka poets, Amelia Fielden & Kathy Kituai. In future, we may offer pairs of our own contributors the same chance.
Amelia is supporting Saeko Ogi in editing Ties in Tanka, seeking new tanka strings (5 poems long) by Australian & Japanese poets. Sequences in English can be sent to Amelia by 1 June 2026: anafielden@gmail.com
Responsive tanka: a double-helix
by Jo McInerney
Welcome to Catchment’s third discussion of tanka sequences.
Where my recent tanka essays have focused on a single poet, this one examines two Australian writers, Amelia Fielden and Kathy Kituai, as they collaborate in what they call ‘responsive tanka’. I will be considering the first six tanka written for February 2009 by Fielden and Kituai in their tanka diary titled Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Published by Interactive Press in 2011, the diary gathers 219 responsive tanka spanning 2009.
In responsive tanka each author reacts to something significant in their writing partner’s prior piece.
For these poets this is clearly a rich and exciting way to work. Kathy Kituai notes in her contribution to the diary’s preface that she keenly anticipated the next tanka from Amelia Fielden, wondering ‘Could I express what I was experiencing at that moment and still connect thematically with Amelia?’
That is part of the challenge and the promise of this mode of writing – presenting one’s own life in a way which somehow brings it into conjunction with what another poet has written.
Kituai notes thematic connections, and these certainly occur, but the collaboration shows that multiple linkages are possible.
Australian tanka and contemporary poet, Michael Thorley, in his introduction to the diary, observes, ‘We have a kind of tanka double-helix: winding together through the year.’ The image of the ladder-like structure of DNA, with its two strands spiralling around each other, connected at multiple points, is a powerful metaphor for how this form of tanka writing operates.
Amelia Fielden’s tanka begins February with:
catamarans
dwarfed by the willows
sail slowly
through the hot afternoon
where racing is just a word
It evokes the easy indolence of an Australian summer: ‘catamarans… / sail slowly / through the hot afternoon’. The reader can imagine the wide double hulls with their curving sails, propelled gently forward by a light breeze.
Giant ‘willows’ fringe the water, making the quietly moving vessels seem small in comparison. It is an almost breathless, almost motionless, almost silent scene, its heat-bound stillness making time itself seem to pause.
The tanka’s last line dismisses the very notion of speed. Whatever the boats are doing, it is not ‘racing’.
Kathy Kituai’s tanka is a finely tuned response:
overhead
two wedge-tail eagles
soaring
and you point skywards
arm circling my waist
Again there is a human presence in a natural expanse, but here it is ‘two wedge-tail eagles’ that are foregrounded. They are ‘soaring’. In the birds’ effortless motion there are echoes of the catamarans’ drifting progress. However, the eagles’ height and inherent power give them a majesty the slowly moving vessels lack.
Below, looking upward, stand the speaker and her companion who is ‘point[ing] skywards / arm circling [her] waist’.
Kituai has achieved a beautiful visual echo here, so slight as to be almost subliminal. The companion with one arm extended and the other circling the partner’s waist suggests mast and sail from the previous tanka.
However, Kituai’s tanka moves the sequence gently forward, with an implicit human relationship and a speaker placed in the action.
Fielden’s answering tanka continues the relational quality while significantly shifting its nature:
can this be love?
the shelter terrier
on the bus
nuzzles a young woman
in a matching sweater
The tanka opens with a question – ‘can this be love?’ – that could be an extension of the point at which Kituai’s previous tanka ended: the couple questioning the nature of their relationship.
However, line two creates a very different context with the introduction of ‘the shelter terrier’.
Dog and ‘young woman’ are placed on a bus, with the presumably rescued animal ‘nuzzl[ing]’ its new owner. The tanka approaches the pair with a gentle humour; however, it does not trivialise their connection.
The animal’s affection, the suggestion of its potentially dire past, and the woman’s attachment, hinted at by the ‘matching sweater[s]’, create a bond the tanka does not dismiss.
This is not the couple looking ‘skyward’, but it is an attractive development of the sequence’s understanding of what a relationship might be.
In her next tanka, Kituai takes the relationship between animal and human and rather than contrasting it with a different type of connection, encourages the human reader to consider what they derive from the creatures they have drawn into their lives:
of the two
who receives the more pleasure…
a cockatoo
clasping biscuits in his claw
or you offering them
Structurally, Kituai’s tanka opens as Fielden’s previous piece did, with a question. This, however, reads as more philosophical and probing – ‘of the two / who receives the more pleasure…’
With the introduction of ‘a cockatoo’, the tone appears to lighten; however, as with Fielden’s most recent piece, the reader underestimates the work if they do not consider it seriously.
The bird is shown ‘clasping biscuits in his claw’, highlighting its simple but powerful dependence on the person who feeds it. This need is brought into direct comparison with that of the owner who offers the food.
The question is not answered. This, and the reader being directly addressed as ‘you’, have a lingering impact. They prompt reflection on the strength and complexity of human beings’ relationships with the animals that share their lives.
Fielden’s next tanka returns the relationship to one between humans but no longer romantic partners. Instead, the connection is between grandmother and grandchild:
granddaughter reclined
on the grass against my knees
both of us
spooning strawberry ice-cream
delight upon delight
This tanka has the positional physicality of Kituai’s first contribution to the February subsequence. Not an arm around a waist but a small body pressed against the knees of a supporting adult.
The mood is closer to that of Fielden’s ‘catamarans’ tanka except here heat is fused with pleasure.
Adult and child are consuming ‘strawberry ice-cream’ – a sweet, cold confection that embodies temporary relief from the weather.
‘Spooning’ is a clever word choice. With its innocent echo of canoodling, it suggests the closeness between grandmother and granddaughter.
The closing ‘delight upon delight’ seems to refer not only to the treat being enjoyed, but to the pleasure the pair take in each other. It resonates gently with Kituai’s questioning of who derives more satisfaction from a mutual relationship.
However, responsive tanka can allow for abrupt changes of tone and subject matter. Kituai’s last contribution discussed here presents a startling volta, drawing on and contrasting multiple threads established earlier in the sequence:
sleepless,
heat lingering in her room
well after midnight
dog and cat following
where he paces in his shed
The tanka opens with an unnamed female, awake and trapped in heat that persists into the night.
‘Well after midnight’ carries a note of sustained anxiety.
Earlier, light-hearted references to heat are tilted in another direction: the stillness arises from a ‘lingering’, oppressive atmosphere rather than the gentle pause of a summer afternoon.
An animal presence is again introduced, with the ‘dog and cat’ seeming to share not a sweater or a biscuit, but rather to sense their owner’s apprehension, or perhaps to feel their own sense of impending disaster.
The final line shows an unnamed man ‘pac[ing] in his shed’. The image is one of powerless fear; a worry that allows no constructive action yet will not let go. It is interesting to note that this time the couple are not together. Is the man perhaps trying to spare his partner his concerns? If so, there is a quiet irony in her sleeplessness.
This final tanka looked at here dwarfs human action but in a way very different from Fielden’s opening piece.
The seventh tanka in their larger sequence happens to be a direct response to the Black Saturday bushfires of February 7, 2009.
The double-helix
These six tanka demonstrate the power of responsive sequences.
The works share a unity in time, which sometimes means they are presenting diverse responses to similar stimuli.
In felt and aware interaction, they trace patterns of human response to the Australian environment, such as innocent pleasure transforming into dread, and the nature and value of different intimate relationships.
And the connections themselves are diverse – thematic, imagistic and structural.
The helix is a complex one. It does not simply allow lines of connection to be drawn between adjoining poems, but lets pieces from one location in a sequence speak to work appearing in another.
As seen here, the results can be highly rewarding. Hopefully the rich possibilities realised within Fielden and Kituai’s collaboration will encourage other tanka writers to take up the challenge.
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The six tanka discussed are presented below as originally published.
Fielden’s work is in bold italics, Kituai’s in plain text.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is published by Interactive Press (2011) and is available in hardcopy or as an e-book from the publishers at https://ipoz.biz/product/yesterday-today-tomorrow/. It is a thought-provoking and engaging work.
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February 2009
catamarans
dwarfed by the willows
sail slowly
through the hot afternoon
where racing is just a word
overhead
two wedge-tail eagles
soaring
and you point skywards
arm circling my waist
can this be love?
the shelter terrier
on the bus
nuzzles a young woman
in a matching sweater
of the two
who receives the more pleasure…
a cockatoo
clasping biscuits in his claw
or you offering them
granddaughter reclined
on the grass against my knees
both of us
spooning strawberry ice-cream
delight upon delight
sleepless,
heat lingering in her room
well after midnight
dog and cat following
where he paces in his shed
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We are very grateful to Amelia Fielden and Kathy Kituai for permission to cite their work and for their enthusiastic support of our efforts.
We also appreciate Interactive Press giving permission for the six tanka discussed to be reproduced in this essay.