Well, this isn’t my original idea – there was a Tanka-A-Day Challenge on the Tousando Boards a while back, and seeing Stealing Plums’ Haiku Week challenge… I decided to start one, too!

In the tradition of the Japanese linked poetry, write a tanka. Historically, the subject is nature, an emotion, a brief experience, etc, and the poems were linked – one person would write a poem, the recipient would respond with a poem that related to the first – you’ll see a lot of references to this sort of thing in the Tale of Genji, when he’s courting just about every woman in the Imperial palace at some point or other. (If you’re medieval, Japanese, and educated, this is all extremely HAWT stuff.)

For this challenge, write a tanka. Use Ficly’s prequel/sequel options to respond to other challengers! See if you can poetically flirt with as many people as possible in the next month. :) Ideally, try writing one a day.

For another explanation of tanka, look here: http://www.americantanka.com/about.html