M Kei

Atlas Poetica 40 M Kei

Thanks to its small size, tanka is a portable poetry. Its emphasis on image and its trust in the reader means that tanka can be read by people of many different backgrounds. The words of the poet unite with the spirit of the reader to create a multitude of poems that appear like sunsets: each reader sees something a little different from everyone else, but all experience the same sun. With this issue, we invite you to join us in extending tanka translation more broadly still. With the permission and cooperation of more than a dozen tanka poets and translators, we are inaugurating a special Tanka Translation Project to run in this issue and the next.