Category Archives: Tanka

At dVerse Grace is hosting the Poetry Form – Golden Shovel. The Golden Shovel is a contemporary poetic form created by Terrance Hayes as a tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool. The poetry form invites poets into a creative dialogue with an existing poem – honouring it while creating something entirely new.  This form is in the tradition of the cento, or erasure, but with a lot more flexibility.

How It Works

– Take a line (or lines) from a poem you admire.
– Use each word in the line(s) as an END word in your poem.
– Keep the words from the original line in order. When finished, you will be able to read down the right margin, and have the original chosen line intact.
– Give credit to the poet who wrote the line(s). You may also want to include a link to the original poem, so we can see your inspiration.
– The new poem does not have to be about the same subject matter, but it can be in a similar vein, if you choose. Or not.

For more info follow the link: dVerse Poets – Poetry Form – Golden Shovel

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Form: Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) Could this be called a Tanka Shovel? I think so!

I have taken the line: Time present and time past which is the first line from ‘Burnt Norton’ the first of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’

punctuating staid time
some say fictions were present
that may be true and
so we blended sublime time
with golden threads from the past

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