Random with Purpose

Sun rises and sets
Rain knows only one direction
Clouds conflate and separate
Darkness is silent and still
Until I crush it with shadows

Dversepoets.com

This month is National Tanka Month, or #NaTankaMo. In honor of this celebration of tanka, I would like to focus on three of the 5-line Japanese forms: tanka, kyoka and gogyohka.

The Gogyohka is a relatively new form of five-line poetry. Unlike tanka and kyoka, it has no structural requirements or thematic tendencies; it only needs to be written in five lines. Jane Dougherty reminds us that “each line is a phrase, it can be of any length, even a single word, but the line break comes when there is a breath pause.”