Judging from the appreciative receptions of the BARE BONES schools of Haiku and of Renga, it seemed natural to organize and revitalize all the tanka materials on hand into a school for tank poets. Reaching back into 1992 I've taken the name from the title of the first anthology of English-language tanka, Wind Five-Folded. It seemed a good description of the form then and even now.

I hope will find much here to inform and entertain you. The highest wish, however is that you feel tanka is a poetry form for you. You can do it. With all the help here you should be able to do it marvelously - the way tanka should be written.

Lesson One
Early Japanese Tanka History

Lesson Two
Japanese Uses of Tanka

Lesson Three
Japanese Tanka in the 20th Century

Lesson Four
Tanka as an English-language Poetry Form

Lesson Five
Teike’s Ten Tanka Techniques

Lesson Six
Modern Japanese Tanka Techniques

Lesson Seven
Comparing Haiku with Tanka

Lesson Eight
The Development of English Tanka

Lesson Nine
Tanka Sequences

Resources

Jane Reichhold has been combining her art and writing since her college days fifty years ago. Her latest book, by Kodansha International, is Basho The Complete Haiku. As founder and editor of AHA Books, Jane has also published Mirrors: International Haiku Forum, Geppo, for the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and she has co-edited with Werner Reichhold, Lynx for Linking Poets since 1992.. Lynx went online in 2000 in AHApoetry.com, the web site Jane started in 1995. She lives near Gualala, California with Werner, her husband, and a Bengal cat named Buddha.