Saturday, October 11, 2014

One Man's Maple Moon: Sunshine & Pain Tanka by Helen Buckingham

English Original

waking half way
through the day
half the sunshine
half the pain
-- still time for a poem

Little Purple Universes, 2011

Helen Buckingham


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

醒來   
日子過了一半
一半陽光
一半疼痛
-- 仍然有時間寫一首詩

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

醒来   
日子过了一半
一半阳光
一半疼痛
-- 仍然有时间写一首诗


Bio Sketch

Helen Buckingham has been writing tanka for the past decade or so and in 2011 had a collection published with (and by) Angela Leuck, titled Little Purple Universes. In the same year she brought out a solo collection: Armadillo Basket (Waterloo Press) encompassing a number of styles, western and Japanese, including tanka.

1 comment:

  1. In the upper verse, Helen skillfully uses syntactic parallelism to convey conflicting feelings (sunshine vs pain) while in the lower verse, the thematic and tonal shift adds depth, psychological and spiritual, to the poem.

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