My tanka below just won a Certificate of Merit by the Tankagendai Corp, the 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012, a contest that is held every three years by The Japan Tanka Poets’ Society with a membership of about 5000.
The awards are divided into four categories: Certificate of Merit (by a sponsor’s name), Excellent Tanka, Fine Tanka, and Encouraging Tanka. The texts of winning tanka in the last two categories are not included in the contest results report.
Here is an excerpt from the report:
“There were 589 entries from all over the world for the above mentioned Tanka Competition. The judges are Jane Reich hold (U. S. A.), Beverley George (Australia), Yasuhiro Kawamura (Japan), and Aya Yuhki (Japan).
The results are as follows: “
Certificate of Merit by the Tankagendai Corp.
nine autumns past
first trip to my homeland…
now in Taipei
drinking alone in moonlight
I still long for Taipei
Chen-ou Liu (Canada)
Judge's comment: The author living in a distant place from [his] native country, now returned to [his] native country. But [he] couldn’t help feeling some kind of awkwardness. This tanka concisely expresses [his] complicated emotions. The repetition of “Taipei” is very effective for the rhythm of this tanka, and moreover, it emphasizes the expression of [his] loneliness. (Aya Yuhki)
