2025 Tanka Prose Contest Winners

A Tanka Society of America 25th Anniversary Special Event

John Budan, judge

Roy Kindelberger, contest coordinator

(128 entries; see submission guidelines)

When I was asked to judge this special tanka prose contest, I was humbled and honored, and it turned out to be a thought-provoking experience. What we call tanka prose has connections with Japanese literary traditions as far back as The Tales of Ise in the 9th century. However, there were no strict rules about how long the prose might be or how the poems (then called waka) should be placed. And the genre is still evolving. In any case, judging is always subjective. I tend to favor tanka poets who can express their experiences and feelings toward life with strong, concrete images or leave me with a vivid impression of those experiences. I prefer carefully chosen words and text that says a lot in a little space without being wordy. I appreciate unsaid or implied emotions and layers of meaning. Although I consider myself a traditionalist, I value experimentation by poets not afraid to push the envelope. I am charmed by a natural flow from title to prose and tanka. I read every tanka aloud, paying attention to the sound. I would like to say that everyone who submitted was a winner of this contest and that I am grateful for being able to read their work.

—John Budan

First Place ($100)

Ashes to Ashes

death brings sadness

finality and closure

but maybe

just maybe

it doesn’t

It’s midnight and the lakeshore is dark. No breeze ruffles the reflected image of the moon. Silently, I open the box and turn it upside down over the water.

A sudden gust of wind blows the tumbling ashes into my hair, my eyes, my clothes. I try to brush him off, but he won’t turn loose.

“Damn it, Dad, you said to put your ashes in the lake. That’s what I’m trying to do. Let go!”

He refuses.

The oarlocks creak as I row back to the dock. I wade into the lake, swish my clothes through the warm water, and put them on the dock to dry.

Naked, I walk through the moonlight toward his cottage.

Jack Douthitt

Fox Point, Wisconsin

“Ashes to Ashes” is a descriptive narrative piece by a skillful storyteller who quickly places us into the setting. We see a dark lakeshore, the reflected moon, a dock, and we hear the creaking of oarlocks in a boat. It’s a vivid scene, created in just a few words. The gloomy event of scattering a father’s ashes on a dark lake would ordinarily evoke melancholy and sadness. But the author upturns the usual form by placing the tanka first and shifts the mood of the narrative with the unpredictable lines “maybe / just maybe” death doesn’t bring “sadness, finality, or closure.”

How would we characterize the writer’s relationship with the father? Was he an over-controlling parent who wouldn’t let go? Who, even in death, starts an argument? “Damn it, Dad, you said to put your ashes in the lake.” His very ashes cling and must be washed away.

As the narrator removes clothes and swishes them in the water, the emotional tone suggests a sense of finally being unburdened. But then, we cannot be too sure. We wonder what other unfinished business awaits this naked adult/child walking through the moonlight toward the father’s cottage.

Second Place ($50)

Stillness After Fire

The fire had long since burned out, but the scent of it lingered; pine needles, singed earth, and something older, almost sweet. I stood where the forest used to breathe, my boots sinking into the ash. I remembered the last hike we took together, years ago now. You paused to press your palm against the bark of a cedar, said it felt like the world had a pulse. I laughed at you then. I didn’t understand that reverence yet.

The silence now feels sacred. I bend to pick up a charred pinecone, its edges curled like fingers still holding on. Even after everything, life insists on returning. I want to tell you that I see it now; that the world has a pulse, and I’ve stopped pretending I don’t feel it.

blackened cedar bark

peels like old paper pages

damp beneath my touch

even in death, something waits

the hush before green returns

through the standing trunks

light filters like memory

uneven and soft

every place we ever loved

becoming something brand new

ash clings to my boots

like it doesn’t want to leave

this ruined cradle

I whisper your name to it

and the wind pulls it apart

Kristie Denz

Jasper, Indiana

In this stark piece, the narrator hikes in a burned-out forest visited with someone else years ago. We don’t know who is remembered. A partner? A friend? The missing person is no longer a vibrant presence in the narrator’s life—like this very forest that was once green and breathing. Back then, the lesson of seeing the forest as a living, pulsing world was lost on this narrator. But now, picking up a charred pinecone triggers the grasping of a reality not seen before. That life is “still holding on.” Even after fire, “life insists on returning.”

The prose appeals to several of our senses: the smell of the singed earth, the touch of a pinecone, the feel of boots sinking in ash, and even a sense of no sound. The poet then concludes with three tanka that link death, memory, and the “whispered” name of that someone else who years ago pressed a “palm against the bark of a cedar.”

Third Place ($25)

Reclamation

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn

Apple seed and apple thorn

Wire, briar, limber lock

Three geese in a flock

One flew east, one flew west

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest

—traditional children’s rhyme, oral tradition

Summer 1968. My first job. A large, state psychiatric hospital. Way out in the country, the far country, many miles from anywhere and nowhere. Out of sight, out of mind. To some, an asylum: a sanctuary of safety and protection from danger. To others, a madhouse, a snake pit, bedlam. To the four thousand men, women, boys, and girls who lived there, home. Its days were numbered in that summer of protest. Change was happening everywhere and soon would be there: its massive oak doors would open and close for the final time and scatter four thousand innocents from their home.

the old asylum

long abandoned . . .

nature

now reclaiming

its familiar grounds

John Tehan

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

In “Reclamation,” I am struck by how the epigraph implies so much: it reminds us of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital where patients are largely not in control of their own lives.

The narrator then takes us back to the tumult of 1968, with its anti-war protests, struggles for racial equality, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. This was the era when new antipsychotic medications led to the deinstitutionalization of persons with mental illness.

We are reminded that “change happening everywhere” has complex and unpredictable consequences. The asylum closure gave some patients their freedom while others were “scattered from their home.” Though these events happened fifty or more years ago, the circumstances resonate with the political and social issues of our current time. Our homeless populations remain largely “out of mind.” To immigrants, our “massive doors” are now closed. There is a harshness to both past and present times. In the end, nature reclaims all. We are left with the question of what that reclamation will look like as we step our way into the future.

Honorable Mentions (not ranked)

Before the Fall

Dear diary,

You know, I used to think I was steering my own life—that my choices were mine. But what I thought of as decisions were actually permissions I was begging for. Bit by bit, I became apologetic for simply existing. He’d yell, and I’d shrink. I handed him control, as if he were a god worthy of my sacrifice.

I edited myself until there was nothing left to cut. My body withdrew from the world—not by choice, but for survival. He convinced me that I hate going out, hate people, and I believed. I hollowed myself out to fit the shape he demanded.

migrating birds

the ache

of watching

how leaves curl at the edges

before falling

Aparna Pathak

Gurugram, Haryana, India

This piece is exceptional. Presented in diary form, “Before the Fall” gives us powerful insight into the destructiveness of an abusive relationship. Our hope is that this psychological violence stays in the speaker’s past.

A Handful of Rocks

Running to catch the bus, napping on the grass, or strolling along the beach—it makes no difference. At the end of each day, my daughter’s pockets are heavy with treasures collected along the way. Rocks and coins, leaves and flowers, she always finds the wonder in the world around us, in ways I guess I’ve forgotten. As she grows, my prayer is that she will continue to seek and search for mysteries and adventure, while becoming at least a bit discerning about what she decides to carry home.

Dusty little dreams

Plucked from sidewalks and streams;

A handful of rocks

Is not a handful of rocks

Once bewitched by my daughter’s affection

Hiram Wilson

Brooklyn, New York

In “A Handful of Rocks,” a different kind of relationship is at the center. A parent expresses hope that the curious child will always find wonder, mystery, and adventure despite the fact that all too soon she will be forced to make wise choices in today’s often toxic world.

John Budan is an octogenarian who has published Japanese poetic forms for more than five decades. His collection of haibun, Just Enough Moon, came out in 2023. His second book, Before the Rules: Tanka and Tanka Prose, followed in 2024. He was a paratrooper and merchant seaman before earning a nursing degree along with a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Texas. Budan is now a retired psychiatric nurse. He lives with his wife in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in a natural habitat they’ve created to preserve oaks and other native plants and wildlife.