Short List for Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume Two

Please forward to all interested persons and venues. 

Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume Two, is nearing completion. The editorial team consisting of M. Kei, editor-in-chief (USA), Sanford Goldstein (JP), Patricia Prime (NZ), Kala Ramesh (India), Alexis Rotella (USA), Angela Leuck (CAN), and Collin Barber (USA), read all tanka published in English during 2009, totaling approximately sixteen thousand poems in more than a hundred and forty venues. They selected about 300 of the best individual tanka, tanka sequences and tanka prose for inclusion the anthology. They congratulate the many fine poets in the rapidly growing field of contemporary tanka in English for their achievements.

A Thiagarajan

A. A. Marcoff

Adelaide B. Shaw

ai li

Alan Spring

Alex von Vaupel

Alexis Rotella

Amelia Fielden

an xiao

Ana-Maria DiVera

an'ya

André Surridge

Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur

Andrew Riutta

Angela Leuck

Anna Holley

Anne E. Michael

Annette Mineo

Audrey Olberg

Aurora Antonovic

Aya Yuhki

Barbara Strang

Becky DeVito

Bell Gale Chevigny

Belinda Broughton

Beverley George

Bob Lucky

C. W. Hawes

C. William Hinderliter

Carol Raisfeld

Carole MacRury

Carolyn Eldridge-Alfonzetti

Carolyn Thomas

Cathy Drinkwater Better

Chad Lee Robinson

Chen-ou Liu

Cherie Hunter Day

Claudia Coutu-Radmore

Colin Stewart Jones

Collin Barber

Cor van den Heuvel

Curtis Dunlap

Cynthia Rowe

Dave Bacharach

Dave Bachelor

David Bingham

David Lee Kirkland

David Rice

David Terelinck

Dawn Bruce

Deborah P. Kolodji

Dee Evetts

Denis M. Garrison,  

Don Miller

Dorothy McLaughlin

Elaine Riddell

Ferris Gilli

Francis Masat

Gautam Nadkarni

Geert Verbeke

George Swede

H. Gene Murtha

J. Andrew Lockhart

Jade Pandora

James Tipton

Jane Reichhold

Janet Lynn Davis

Jared Carter

Jean LeBlanc

Jeanne Emrich

Jeffrey Woodward

Jennifer Nelson Heinmiller

Jo McInerney

Joanne Morcom

John Martell

John Quinnett

Joyce Sandeen Johnson

June Moreau

Kala Ramesh

Karen Cesar

Kathy Kituai

Kathy Lippard Cobb

Kirsty Karkow

Kisaburo Konoshima

David Callner

Kris Lindbeck

Kristin Reynolds

Kozue Uzawa

Larry Kimmel

Laurence Stacey

Laurie W. Stoelting

Lenard D. Moore

LeRoy Gorman

Liam Wilkinson

Linda Galloway

Linda Jeannette Ward

Lois Harvey

Lorelei Jolie Polden

M. Kei

M. L. Harvey

Magdalena Dale

Margaret Chula

Maragaret Grace

Margarita Engle

Maria Steyn

Marilyn Hazelton

Marilyn Potter

Marian Morgan

Mark Rutter

Mary Mageau

Max Ryan

Megan Arkenberg

Melissa Dixon

Michael Ketchek

Michael McClintock

Miriam Sagan

Murial Ford

Natalia L. Rudychev

Owen Bullock

Pamela A. Babusci,

Pamela Cooper

Pamela Miller Ness

Patricia Prime

Patrick M. Pilarski

Paul O. Williams

Paul Smith

Peggy Heinrich

Philip Miller,

Philomene Kocher

R. K. Singh

Randy Brooks

Raquel D. Bailey

Reiko Nakagawa

William I. Elliott

robert d. wilson

Robert Kusch

Roberta Beary

Roger Jones

Ruth Holzer

Sanford Goldstein

Sean Greenlaw

stanley pelter

Susan Marie La Vallee

Terry Ann Carter

Tess Driver

Thelma Mariano

Tom Clausen

Vasile Moldovan

William Hart

While being short-listed does not guarantee inclusion in the final version of the anthology, the finalists will be drawn from the Short List. 

All poets have been notified of their short list status and provided with an opportunity to grant permission and make any necessary corrections. If a poet appearing on this list has not received their notification, they should check their spam filters and make certain they are set to allow communications from Take5Tanka@gmail.com and Keibooks-Announce@googlegroups.com. If they still cannot find their notification, they should contact the editor-in-chief atTake5Tanka@gmail.com with valid contact information so that their notifications can be resent. 

Poems cannot be published without receiving the poet's explicit permission. Poets who do not respond, or who cannot be contacted by the editor-in-chief, will have their work omitted from the final version of Take Five, Volume Two.

Take Five, Volume Two, is scheduled to appear in print in April of 2010. It can be purchased from Lulu.com or other booksellers. 

Meanwhile, the editorial team for Take Five, Volume Three, is already at work. Further information about Tak5 Vol 3 will be forthcoming at a later date. 

Congratulations to all the fine poets!

~K~

New Picasa Album

Recently I purchased a digital camera and have uploaded images to a Picasa web album. You will find some publicity photos of me, as well as from my books, plus candid images from the tall ship whose crew I recently joined: the Kalmar Nyckel. The KN is going through winter maintenance right now, so is torn apart and not pretty, but I managed to get some good shots of various pieces of deck furniture and other features, including the great cabin. Sadly, none of the snow pictures I took during Snowmageddon turned out.

Life Imitates Fiction

During 2008-2009 I wrote a trilogy of novels for my own amusement called Pirates of the Narrow Seas. The first one, now named The Sallee Rovers, is in print already: http://www.lulu.com/content/8157511. A good review caused a small e-book publisher, Bristlecone Pine Press, to pick up all three. They'll be coming available on the Kindle and other e-book sellers later this spring.

At the time I wrote the novels, I was a member of the crew of a small, fore-and-aft rigged, historic wooden sailboat. The nautical parts of the novels were partly experience and extrapolation from my fore-and-aft experience, and partly research. As I have been proofreading and editing to get them ready for the e-book publication, I have noticed instances of life imitating fiction.

First, in the last of the three books, a new important ship appears: a frigate with a watersail, sprit topmast and sprit topsail, a lateen mizzen and shebeck yard, and a whipstaff to steer her. I went through Chapman's Mercatoria Navalis and picked out a small, handsome vessel with exquisite lines -- I wanted to reward my heroes with a fast and agile sailer. Her set up was rather old-fashioned, but that she offered all the features I wanted in a ship for my heroes, coupled with better documentation than some of the other vessels in the book.

Last December I joined the crew of a fully rigged ship. She's the only ship in the Western hemisphere who has watersail, sprit topmast and sprit topsail, a lateen mizzen and shebeck yard, and a whipstaff to steer her.  What are the odds of that?

In one of the novels (Book Three : Iron Men), an accident occurs when men lay aloft in icy weather, and one falls do to uncertain footing. Not just icy, but the horses wanted mousing. That is to say, one of the supports that keeps the footrope more or less level (as opposed to hanging in a big curve), was not secure. Between the ice and the sudden sag of the footrope, the man lost his grip and fell and was badly injured.

Last week, the sprit topsail was set up on sawhorses in the sail loft so we could practice laying on, making and dousing sail. Not to mention, tying sail gaskets upside. Needless to say, in that situation, the horses weren't moused, either. Two of us lay on, fortunately only about a foot above the floor, and the footrope danced violently. It was abundantly clear how, even without ice, a man might be pitched off the footrope.

There is another incident in which the ship suffers an accident when the novice helmsman turns the wrong way in response to direction, becomes confused, and attempts to correct his mistake, making the situation worse.

I will not say our first exercise with the sails went that badly, but the opportunity for confusion is ample among novices :) We were moored to the dock and merely raising and lowering the fore course, and it was the trainees first time doing so, so errors are to be expected. A ship is an intricate piece of machinery and the crew who work her are part of that machinery. They must learn their roles so well that they can move like living gears in the whole complex organism.

Google Themes

Two years ago my autistic son took some photographs. I have turned two of them into themes for Google. They're nice nature photographs, look for 'Goose Lagoon', taken in the lagoon near the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum at the foot of Lafayette Street in Havre de Grace, Maryland; and 'Fallen Willow,' taken near Concord Point Lighthouse at the same location. The willow is now gone; it was removed to make way for the new dock at that location.

~K~