Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka Volume 2

by M. Kei (Editor-in-Chief), Sanford Goldstein, Alexis Rotella (Editor)

Editors, M. Kei, editor-in-chief, Sanford Goldstein, Patricia Prime, Kala Ramesh, Alexis Rotella & Angela Leuck, read all contemporary tanka published in English during 2009, over 16,000 poems. Sources included tanka journals, social media, musical performances, chapbooks & many other formats. The result is Take Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. Two, showcasing tanka, tanka prose & tanka sequences by 140 poets from over a dozen countries. Originating in Japan over 1,400 years ago, tanka has survived and evolved due to its strength and flexibility. Each tanka is as complete as a pebble, yet like a pebble thrown into the still pond of a receptive mind, it becomes the center of ever widening ripples. This is a most powerful kind of poetry that can span the gap between nations & meld itself with local traditions to provide a new—yet ancient—way to engage the world.

2 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet. He lives on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and apprenticed aboard a skipjack, a sail-powered oyster dredge. He now serves with a fully rigged ship. His publications include over 1200 tanka poems in six languages and ten countries. He is the editor-in-chief of the anthology series, Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, and the author of Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, a log he kept in verse form of several extended trips aboard a skipjack. He has edited and authored several other books of poetry and a major journal, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka. He is also the author of the award-winning Pirates of the Narrow Seas series of gay naval adventure novels.