Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge, Specific Form, Shadorma, 11/19/24

For the past year, I’ve been reading poetry on Tanka Tuesday, a blog that has a writing challenge. Each week, one of the team members creates a new challenge. Today, I’m responding to Cheryl (Rugby843) of the Tanka Tuesday Team. Here are some guidelines Cheryl included that explain the week’s challenge. She asked poets to write a Shadorma. I’ve never heard of a genre of poetry named Shadorma! I learned this year what Syllabic Poetry is, a poem where syllables are counted! I think most people have heard of a haiku, a Japanese syllabic poetic form. I believe it’s a well-known poetic form. Many poetry journals and magazines have haiku. If you’re not familiar with haiku, it has the 5/7/5 syllable format. I recently wrote three rensaku, which are a form of tanka.

Shadorma was a new challenge for me. It consists of a different number of syllables. Cheryl’s chart made it simple to see the format before I began writing. Since I’m a visual learner, I work better by having charts, diagrams or pictures. I also liked that I could choose my own theme. I’m more inspired if there aren’t too many rules. Learning Syllabic Poetry has been good exercise for my brain in addition to lots of fun!
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What is a Shadorma?
Shadorma is a Spanish poetic form that consists of six-line stanzas, or sestets, with a specific syllable count for each line: (3/5/3/3/7/5). A Shadorma can have one stanza or multiple stanzas, called a series. Shadorma poems are usually unrhymed. I followed Cheryl’s example in writing my Shadorma. I plan to add more six-line stanzas to make my Shadorma into a series later.

Line 1: Three syllables
Line 2: Five syllables
Lines 3 and 4: Three syllables each
Line 5: Seven syllables
Line 6: Five syllables

***How to participate in the challenge if you’re interested. I am using Cheryl’s instructions because I’m new at this. This week: Write a shadorma on a theme of your choosing, using the Shadoma syllabic form. If you write a freestyle poem, you must include a shadorma with it.

• Post your poem on your personal site/blog.• Give us the instructions on how to write the syllabic form you used.• Include a link back to http://TankaTuesday.com in your post. Copy the link of your published post into Mr. Linky. There are no recaps this year.• Remember to click the small checkbox about data protection.• Read and comment on some of your fellow poets’ work.• Like and leave a comment below if you choose to do so.• This challenge closes on the following Monday at noon EST Detroit, USA. Have fun! Don’t forget to visit Mr. Linky on last week’s challenge post in case you missed reading the poetry!

⬇ MR. LINKY ⬇

https://www.blenza.com/linkies/links.php?owner=cmchesebro&postid=14Oct2024&meme=13466

What is Tanka Tuesday?

In 2016, Tanka Tuesday was created as a platform for poets to learn the fundamentals of Japanese and American syllabic poetry. Each week, our poetry community comes together to write syllabic poetry together. Here is a link where you can learn more about Tanka Tuesday. https://tankatuesday.com/tanka-tuesday-poetry-challenge-rules/

My Theme

The theme I chose this week is WAR. The possibility of Nuclear War scares me. The news has been especially tense lately. Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, China and more countries and organizations threaten each other daily. The United States has Culture Wars, Religious Wars, Political Wars, Drug Wars, wars to control our minds and wars within our families. Evil scientists all over the world create biologic and chemical weapons. I can’t forget to mention Aliens, visitors from other planets ‘out there’. What if they want war? Maybe they aren’t real. 

I’ve lived with war and the threat of war all my life. In grade school in the early 1960s, the teachers made the students practice how to be safe from bomb attacks. We had to crouch under our desks in a fetal position and protect our heads with our arms. The Communists hated America so they wanted (and still do!) to kill all the people. Bomb drills made me feel sick. I wanted to hide forever. Sometimes I still feel that way. 

The Viet Nam War was on television plus in newspapers and magazines. My dad explained pages and pages of photographs in the Indianapolis News. He covered several pictures with his hand. I was too young to see them, he said.  I was a young teen. I wanted to cry when I saw those flag-draped caskets carried off planes with soldiers inside. A friend from high school died “over there.” He lived in back of our house across the alley and was a few years older than me. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. He was cute and funny. His younger brother came across the alley one day to say that James had been killed two months after arriving in the jungle. James was eighteen. I was fourteen. War Is Hell! 

Anti War protests were everywhere. I still remember the slogans. “Hell No, We Won’t Go!” “Give Peace A Chance.” “Make Love Not War.” “War Is Not Healthy For Children And Other Living Things.” Young people today have probably never heard about The Fall of Saigon. Seeing the videos on tv of people carrying babies and young children up the steps to the roof of the American Embassy to the helicopter and handing them over to officers and stewardesses, was so emotional for me. The babies flew to the United States to be adopted, but loved ones remained behind. Viet Nam had fallen to the Communists. When Walter Cronkite announced that was the last plane out of Saigon, I ran to my room. We didn’t have live news back then so the films were airmailed on the first flight to stations in New York. I know a woman who was one of those babies. 

My friends in eighth grade made anti-war posters and displayed them in school. I wanted to talk about serious things. Most girls were more interested in having fun. 

The Cold War, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and more wars. Nuclear War is the most horrible war hanging over our heads. All these wars are simply Good vs Evil. Some are at fault, some are guilty, some are victims. What would it be like to have no more wars? I pray for peace every day. 

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Here is my Shadorma: 

What Should We Name This War?

I hate war

Yet rich men love it

I am right

you are wrong

guns tanks bombs your side my side 

only death and blood

by Kay Castaneda

No No! No! Make Love Not War

 

NO MORE WAR! ✌️😥☮️🏳️‍🌎🙏👼👬👭👫🩷💙💚🌷🐦