American Tanka: An Inch of Freedom

The newest issues (January 2015) of Ameican Tanka is themed “an inch of freedom.” A sampling of first lines: “from my garden / bindweed creeps” (Robert Amis); “the storm / predicted and mapped” (Jari Thymian); “temple-bell / stirs devout thougts” (Vishnu P. Kapoor); “Uncle A with the rolling / musical chuckle -” (Roger Jones).

American Tanka is an online publication that “seeks to present a small selection of some of the most well-crafted English-language tanka being written today, in a visually calm space that allows the reader’s eye to focus on the single poem and linger in the moment it evokes.” Having begun as a print journal in 1996, Founder and Editor Laura Maffei produced the publication until 2008. After a two-year hiatus, Maffei brought the journal back online in the original one-poem-per-page format. American Tanka is published once or twice per year.