Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is an innovative project continuing and developing the collaborative relationship between two fine tanka poets, Amelia Fielden and Kathy Kituai.
This is a tanka diary, extending over one calendar year, where the two poets interact and respond to each other’s reflections as the days pass.
It is thus creative and personal, with many opportunities for contrast and agreement.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Kituai and Fielden’s responsive tanka capture the rhythms and extremities of our unique Australian landscape. From the devastation of the Black Saturday fires and the government cull of kangaroos to the exquisite beauty of ‘galahs sweeping skywards from the dunes’, there is a depth of wisdom and emotion in these poems waiting to be revealed; a keenly observed ecstasy for life.
– Graham Nunn, Australia poet and publisher
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
A dual delight. . . unique and complementary, the voices of Kituai and Fielden reveal timeless truths on universal themes. Their year-long responsive tanka diary is not only a book for today, but provides indelible links with all our yesterdays. With intuitive poetic skill, the fragility of fleeting moments comes alive.
Lyrical and sensitive, these responses capture sadness and grief, desire and joy, and express innate appreciation and value for life. Kituai and Fielden record both the small and larger experiences that affect us as individual and community; be it the silver wedding ring of the man who offers his seat, or the children ripped out of reach by a tsunami.
– David Terelinck, poet and tanka writer
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
The book-length tanka collaboration, by Kathy Kituai and Amelia Fielden, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, explores the deep and sometimes uncanny relationships between our human experiences and our wider, more tenuous, though no less ambiguous experiences of life. These are poems to be savoured in the mouth and tanka to listen to: they demand to be read aloud, sung. Some tanka seem not so much written as orchestrated – sounds and meaning giving way to music and musical effects. There is exuberance and a love of nature and language throughout this collection, and also an irresistible sense of play. The tanka are written in an almost subliminal language filled with beautiful tension and silent immensity. This is a collection where two poets’ delight in words is fully displayed for our pleasure.
– Patrica Prime, New Zealand poet and editor
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
Over the period of one year, Amelia and Kathy have corresponded with unique responses to each other’s tanka unfolding the fabric of individual life experiences. The poems flow gently along allowing the reader to empathise and identify and with their own inner-most feelings and yet throughout, the poets maintain their distinctiveness. In these times of uncertainty the world economy doesn’t escape mention along with the rich pickings of youth and ageing, love and death.
The result is a distillation of emotions, clear perceptions and strong images which, is like sipping the best plum wine while wandering through a marvellous art exhibition.
This book is one to be savoured.
– Margaret L Grace, artist, poet and tanka writer