Poetic Resonance

P K Padhy

Contours of Silhouette

The red sun radiates a gentle warmth, and songs of nest-ward birds mingle with the muse of waves. Clouds float gently up in the sky, catching a glimpse of twilight.

On the shore, she collects small shells and pebbles to build her cozy home with care. As evening falls, she keeps her tiny doll inside, claps loudly, and promises to return tomorrow.

The mother fondly lifts her under the star-studded full moon sky. She smiles, godliness dwells in the dream-house of innocence.

a fallen flower

she tenderly picks

as dusk nears

why does this life shape

hastily so as a sandcastle

Remembrance Anthology, South Asian Poets 2025 ( Ed. Suman Gujaral)

Judges: Beta Rish, Farhana Shaikh, and Durre Shahwar.

The tanka prose (a Japanese short form of poetry) unveils the innocence of a child. The poem has a Zen feeling and subtle anxieties the poet shows about the fragility of life. The concluding tanka juxtaposes the nuances of the prose section and the denotative title.

P K Padhy

P K Padhy

Dear Melissa,

I express my gratitude to you and your esteemed colleague–editors, Colleen, Selam, Willow, Robbie, and Yvette, for featuring in Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge “Hainka”, 5/13/2025. I happened to see on the internet a couple of days ago. I am thrilled to read the response, the aesthetic composition of hainka
, and comments from a wide section of readers. I feel humbled. My gratitude to all poets, readers.

Please consider adding the new Poetry Form, hainka, to your blog.

Since March 2016, I have been thinking about a new concept of writing a combination of ‘haiku and tanka’ (hainka). I coined the genre "HAINKA" on March 21, 2016, and documented this new genre in my diary. Later, in 2020, I wrote a detailed essay about HAINKA, which was appreciated by Jim Kacin. He is kind enough to archive it in the Digital Library, The Haiku Foundation. Later, ‘Writer’s Digest’ published the article in 2020.

Hainka is a fusion of haiku and tanka in such a way that the fragment of the haiku will be the pivot line (kakekatoba) of the following tanka. The “Hainka” portrays a broader coherency of the images, keeping in view the aspect of ‘link and shift’ within the framework of the combined poem (s/l/s/s/l/s/l/l). It can be composed either by the poet himself or in collaboration.

Many of my hainka are published in Akita Haikuist Network, translated into Japanese by Hidenori Hiruta. Some are translated into Arabic. Recently, Alan Summers featured one hainka in Pan Haiku Review, 2024.

I introduced a new genre, “ Braided Haiku,” and the essay is featured in Frogpond. Micro-Haiga (One-word Haiga) is published in the Haiku Galleries, The Haiku Foundation. A couple of research papers on haiku will be published this year in Presence, Juxtapositions, and other journals.

I have written a long essay on tanka prose (unpublished). I would be grateful if you could publish this as it is or in an abridged form in your Tanka Tuesday Blog.
Please take care
Warm regards
Pravat

Brief-Bio:
Pravat Kumar Padhy obtained his Master of Science and a Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. He is a mainstream poet and a writer of Japanese short forms of poetry. His poem “How Beautiful” is included in the undergraduate curriculum at the university level. He introduced new forms of poetry: Hainka: a fusion of haiku and tanka, One-word Micro-Haiga, and Braided Haiku. He served as a panel judge of “The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems” and is on the editorial board of Under the Basho.

He resides in Bhubaneswar, India, writes papers on ‘Cosmic Science and Planetary Geology’, and listens to classical music and songs.

Special Thanks

May 25, 2025

—

Learning Syllabic Forms

3 minutes

braided haiku, hainka, Pravat Kumar Padhy

It’s always a pleasure to hear from the poets who create the syllabic forms we enjoy using at Tanka Tuesday. A couple of weeks ago, Melissa discovered the hainka form and used it in our challenge, which can be found here.

She received a lovely message from the creator of this form. I’ve shared the message below:

Dear Melissa,

I express my gratitude to you and your esteemed colleague–editors, Colleen, Selam, Willow, Robbie, and Yvette, for featuring in Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge “Hainka”, 5/13/2025. I happened to see on the internet a couple of days ago. I am thrilled to read the response, the aesthetic composition of haink, and comments from a wide section of readers. I feel humbled. My gratitude to all poets, readers.

Please consider adding the new Poetry Form, hainka, to your blog.

Since March 2016, I have been thinking about a new concept of writing a combination of ‘haiku and tanka’ (hainka). I coined the genre “HAINKA” on March 21, 2016, and documented this new genre in my diary. Later, in 2020, I wrote a detailed essay about HAINKA, which was appreciated by Jim Kacin. He is kind enough to archive it in the Digital Library, The Haiku Foundation. Later, ‘Writer’s Digest’ published the article in 2020.

Hainka is a fusion of haiku and tanka in such a way that the fragment of the haiku will be the pivot line (kakekatoba) of the following tanka. The “Hainka” portrays a broader coherency of the images, keeping in view the aspect of ‘link and shift’ within the framework of the combined poem (s/l/s/s/l/s/l/l). It can be composed either by the poet himself or in collaboration.

Many of my hainka are published in Akita Haikuist Network, translated into Japanese by Hidenori Hiruta. Some are translated into Arabic. Recently, Alan Summers featured one hainka in Pan Haiku Review, 2024.

I introduced a new genre, “ Braided Haiku,” and the essay is featured in Frogpond. Micro-Haiga (One-word Haiga) is published in the Haiku Galleries, The Haiku Foundation. A couple of research papers on haiku will be published this year inPresence, Juxtapositions, and other journals.

I have written a long essay on tanka prose (unpublished). I would be grateful if you could publish this as it is or in an abridged form in your Tanka Tuesday Blog.
Please take care.
Warm regards,
Pravat

Brief-Bio:
Pravat Kumar Padhy obtained his Master of Science and a Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. He is a mainstream poet and a writer of Japanese short forms of poetry. His poem “How Beautiful” is included in the undergraduate curriculum at the university level. He introduced new forms of poetry: Hainka: a fusion of haiku and tanka, One-word Micro-Haiga, and Braided Haiku. He served as a panel judge of “The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems” and is on the editorial board of Under the Basho.

He resides in Bhubaneswar, India, writes papers on ‘Cosmic Science and Planetary Geology’, and listens to classical music and songs.

I don’t know if Pravat has a blog, but it was lovely to hear from him. I will add the hainka to our forms as soon as I can.

~Colleen~

25.5.2025

28 responses to “Special Thanks”

1.

Jules

May 25, 2025 at 2:52 pm

I created …a few years ago… Issho ni kaita retrans which translates to ‘Letters we wrote together’ which combines (in various and or multiple combinations) a haiku (or short verse) and 17 syllable American Sentence(s). I have only published this on my own blog though. :)

I’ve also created and named other combinations of short forms…. I’d have to look them up though. :D

Nice article.

Liked by 1 person

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Thursday, September 18, 2025

Remembrance Anthology: South Asian Poets 2025

Friday, September 5, 2025

Special Thanks: Hainka

28 responses to “Special Thanks”