April 2nd, 12 – 1pm, Senate Chamber, ARTS Building

The adoption of haiku as a form for writing poetry in English is much better known than the case of waka, or tanka, the modern term for this thirty-one syllable form. With a 1400 year history within Japan, waka is recently attracting an increasing number of adherents in the English-writing world. This lecture will briefly outline the development of waka within Japan’s classical tradition and its transformation to tanka in the modern period, documenting shifts in style and emotive quality. The lecture will speculate upon the importance of both haiku and tanka in the revitalization of poetry writing as a practice for every-day life in our prose dominated modern world.

Calligraphy Exhibition
Calligraphy Workshoips
Tanka Writing Workshop
Guest Lecture