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.
Australian poet, Amelia Fielden, has a Master of Arts degree in Japanese Literature, and is a professional translator who also writes original English verse in the traditional Japanese tanka form. Specializing currently in the work of contemporary Japanese women poets, Amelia has translated sixteen such collections to date. In 2007 she was awarded the Donald Keene Prize For Translation of Japanese Literature by Columbia University, USA, for Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Japanese Tanka (Cheng & Tsui, Boston). Amelia's own tanka have been widely published in journals and anthologies,and awarded internationally. Six collections of her original poetry have appeared between 2002 and 2010, the most recent of them being Baubles, Bangles & Beads (2007) and Light On Water (2010). Also published in 2010 was Weaver Birds, a bilingual collaborative tanka diary created by Amelia and Japanese born Canberra poet, Saeko Ogi.
from Journeys
at the edge
of the station platform
a pigeon
unfolds its wings to fly,
and I will too, I will af
鳩ひとつ駅のホームの片隅に
飛び立たむとす吾も飛ばむ吾も
エンジンの響き高まり離陸する
一瞬思ふ旅立ち近く s
I think of that moment
when the jet-engine revs
higher for takeoff —
my departure date
is approaching
sixty years
of flying, still thrilled
by the instant
when the plane roars, rises
slanting into the sky
大空を斜めに昇り機のうなる
今も昂ぶる六十年経て
直線に切り取られたる東京の
空につながるキャンベラの空
so narrow
sliced vertically
the Tokyo sky
is joined to the sky
of Canberra
Kathy Kituai, diarist, editor, poet, creative writing teacher was founder and facilitator of the Limestone Tanka Poets is never happier than when working with other writers and artists. Apart from publishing two tanka collection with Amelia Fielden, she has published poetry with numerous poets, was awarded Arts ACT funding to work with a potter, Fergus Stewart, in Scotland to produce Deep in the Valley of Tea Bowls. Nitya Bernard Parker improvised music for their CD, The Heart Takes Wing. Composer, Rosemary Austin created a musical Script The Lacemaker, the poem Elizabeth Dalmon danced to at Tillies and The Fringe – South Australia Writing Festival. Kathy was an assistant editor for the Institute of PNG Studies, tanka ed- itor for Cattails, and Muse magazine, is published in Japan, Canada New Zealand, India, UK, USA and Australia, was president and vice president of The Fellowship of Writers, a host of Poetry Readings at Manning Clarke House, the Steering Committee for the Weereewa Lake George Arts Festi- val, and Arts ACT funding committee. She has judged literary competitions and co-judged the Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Competition. Accolades for her free-verse include CJ Dennis Award, St Kilda Literature Competition, Banjo Patterson Poetry Award (equal second), Somerset Po- etry Prize, (runner up), The Broadway Poetry Award (finalist), and she was awarded two ACT Critic awards for her teaching. Her tanka have also been successful in the Mainichi Japanese Tanka Award, Tea Towel Award (Re- sponses to the art of Otagaki Rengetsu), the Fuji Tanka Award, Eucalypt Scribbler’s Award and Ribbons People’s Choice Award.
Hooked
Most mornings you are at the Dickson Wetlands, a man with a rod in hand, straw hat squatting on silver hair, wheelie parked safely at a distance. Why do we never talk? What do you hope to catch? Redfin or perch? I am told they’re seeded in the Molonglo River and drift downstream to these wetlands. Do you, like me, contemplate the way children who coast here in a pram, trawl the sky overhead, having no words for vastness and unimagined hues? Can you recall a time you skittled pebbles across a creek just to see how often they touched the water yet kept going? Will you reel in old ways of doing things once new to you as a lad, look fish you catch in the eye, hit them on the head before removing the hook? They say fish have too small a brain to contemplate anything, and never feel pain. Would your steps falter if you pondered on why fish writhe in ice buckets five hours before one last breath?
Dilemma
Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra
This is not the first kangaroo to vault a lake’s wall
and be engulfed in water nor the last to be prized
for its ability to rise
10 feet in the air
tail and hind legs a tripod keeping the balance
How to jump back again
Does the splash as kangaroos collapse,
whack against the wall?
Do shadows of the mob reflect in the lake
as they creep forward?
Does sunset grace their silhouettes
with cerise and golden rays
or do darker skies deepen
when members of their mob fall?
Someone must have loved the wall circumnavigating the lake
was proud of it, and rightly so
to be commissioned to build it
fifty years ago
A wall can only speak
of its purpose brick by brick
Kangaroos can only keep upright
if their hind legs are not hindered
We can only avoid drowning
in the futility of words
speak of cadaver
rootless as driftwood
observe their corpses
There is a move afoot
to renew Lake Burley Griffin’s wall
restore this barrier from wind
ensure pelicans, swans, and bush hens
are safe
This is not the first kangaroo
to vault a lake’s wall
and be engulfed in water.
Crimson Fur Flaring
Edinburgh, Scotland
I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes and poems …
– Mary Oliver
How I loved to run my four-year-old fingers over a figurine of a vixen
head resting on her forefeet
tail wrapped like a scarf around each paw
I didn’t know of their taste
for chickens back then
nor did I conceive how they dug under barb wired coops
to slaughter sleeping chicks
one blood-drenched hen dragged to the den
Today – urban pups
cavort over and under refurbished planks of wood
in metropolitan sites
the way skulks of old pranced across fallen branches of pine birch oaks in backwoods meadowland
TODAY – Vixens sit in the glooming crimson fur flaring tongues caressing tails and fragile chins of hungry pups as tenderly as any mother’s touch.
Confined to brick
and mortared city streets high rise buildings
car yards fast food stalls late night shopping malls what can wildlife hunt?
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| Editions | Ebook, PB |
| Options | ePub, mobi(kindle), PB, pdf |
This collection of new and selected poems, like the jam that metaphorically spreads itself throughout, “sparkles like liquid gems in a momentary sun.”
What do a poet and a potter have in common?
Isn’t the daily task of working with clay, be it plugging, glazing or trimming pots ready to be fired in the kiln much the same as writing zero drafts in a journal and moulding these entries into poetry for publication?
Two of Australia’s most accomplished tanka artists collaborate in this bi-lingual (English / Japanese) collection.
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