Dates for the next online haiku & tanka courses in 2014

With Words regularly run online courses:

Online Tanka courses; Online Haiku courses;
Haibun and Tanka Prose courses; as well as a range of introductory, intermediate, and advanced group or one-to-one online courses and feedback.

Enquiries about the courses and our "early bird"rate if paying at least a month in advance can be answered by Karen at: karen@withwords.org.uk

Here is some feedback from our first tanka course, which finished at the end of last year:

"Thank you for your feed back. You make things seem so clear ...  So enjoyed reading the others' work too."  
Margaret Beverland (permission given)

"I have enjoyed the course tremendously and know that I will return to Alan's notes frequently as I continue to write tanka."  
Jan Harris (permission given)



Tanka are well-grounded in concrete images yet infused with lyric intensity, and an intimacy from direct expression of emotion tempered with implication. Tanka contain ingredients of suggestion colored by shade and tone, setting off a nuance more potent than direct statement. Almost any subject, explicitly expressing your direct thoughts and feelings can be contained in this short form poetry. 

Alan Summers, 
Decoding Tanka (Extract from Article in Progress)

Haiku: (plural and singular spelling)

The shortest of all short poems, yet containing enough that the result leaves enough for the reader to create a longer poem for themselves.

• Haiku (plural and singular spelling) are usually made up of three short lines in a short, long, short line order. They can be read out loud in about six seconds. 
• They're written in the present tense, in ordinary language, and work well including two different images that although are side by side, they spark off each other, creating new possibilities.
• Almost any subject can be caught by haiku. 
• Haiku are not sayings, opinion, aphorisms, or any other type of statement about how life is. 
• Haiku don't tell, lead, or instruct the reader what to think or feel; a haiku gives neutral facts (concrete images) that the writer has observed.
• The presentation of a partnership between two images allows the reader to reach their own conclusions about what the poem is describing, not the poet's viewpoint. The reader is an equal partner to the writer, and is the person who completes the poem.

Alan Summers, Writing Poetry: the haiku way (Extract from the Book in Progress) 

An updated biography of Alan Summers, lead tutor of With Words can be read at the following weblink, scroll down: 
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/entry-details-that-wed-like-for-haiku.html

To find out more about what the courses involve and how they run, please email karen@withwords.org.uk for an information sheet and quotes from participants who have taken the courses over the years.

Many thanks!

Karen at With Words


.