Book Review: Roots that hold: an anthology of tanka prose

Edited by Liz Lanigan, Mira Walker, and Tony Steven Williams
Published by the Lyrebird Tanka Circle
Canberra, Australia
2026, paperback, 92 pages
ISBN: 978-0-6484454-4-9
Price: AU$20 + postage
Ordering Information


Reviewed by Jenny Ward Angyal

The Lyrebirds of Australia sing with a multitude of voices—an apt metaphor for this anthology of tanka prose penned by members of the Lyrebird Tanka Circle of Canberra. In the five years since its formation, the group has produced a remarkable body of work. This anthology, their first, offers 46 diverse tanka prose by fourteen poets. The title is drawn from the tanka in “Finding a way” by Ailsa Brown:

wind-whipped
I stare into storm grey clouds
a dare
to be a wild thing
loosed from the roots that hold me

Brown does not tell us whether or not she accepts that dare. For many living things, to be entirely loosed from one’s roots is to court death, and in fact the poems in this volume are deeply rooted: in family, relationships, community, place, and the natural world. Many are grounded in the rich natural and human history of Australia, and the volume begins with an “Acknowledgement of Country,” paying respect to the First Nations peoples who are the “original storytellers” of the region around Canberra. But other tanka stories in this wide-ranging anthology carry us as far away as Japan, India, Africa, Spain, Paris, London. Whatever the geographical setting, each piece explores the roots that bind the human heart.

The book is divided into six thematic sections, each one named for some attribute of the lyrebird’s appearance, behavior, or environment. (As John Budan notes in his preface, the lyrebird is able “to sing in many different voices.”) “Sanctuary” opens with a note describing how the female lyrebird rears her single chick, and the seven tanka prose in this section explore the varieties of sanctuary provided by parents, grandparents, trees, roots, and the land itself. Michelle Brock’s “Hush and Goodnight “ tells the story of a young couple who receive “baby things” (including a metal cot) from an older relative who was forced, as a young, unwed mother, to give up an infant. Narrated by the wife, the piece traces the history of the young couple’s family, and closes in a sad and moving way:

While I waited for grandchildren to arrive, I remembered little snippets of the early days—sewing new quilts for each child, reading their favourite bedtime stories over and over and over, eavesdropping on the songs they composed for their teddy bears.

she taught me to tuck
my sheets with hospital corners
the aunt
who never spoke
of the child they took away

The cot was consigned to a pile of hard rubbish on the kerbside in the autumn of my sixtieth year. Grandchildren finally arrived, three so far but they live interstate. A portacot does for their visits.

hush
and goodnight...
how many babies
soothed to sleep
by another mother’s lullaby?

In “The Road to Riches,” Barbara Curnow paints an engaging portrait of her grandmother during World War II, with her husband far away fighting in France. The tanka in this piece brilliantly turn images of life in those difficult years into metaphors:

a pantry
packed with pickles and preserves
throughout the war
her fruit and feelings
all bottled up

war reports
arrive on radio waves
late at night
she tries to tune in
to her husband’s heart

Her young son, Jim (Curnow’s father), discovers a cache of “diamonds”—an amazing turn of events for that time and place. But you will have to read this charming tanka prose for yourself to resolve the mystery!

In “The Bundian Way,” Carmel Summers writes of the sanctuary provided by an ancient aboriginal pathway from the mountains to the coast, and draws a troubling contrast between the old ways and contemporary life:

summer holidays
the wash, whoosh, wash of cars
along the road
beside a crumpled can
an ancient stone blade

The book’s next section, “The Wild Waltz,” opens with a description of the male lyrebird’s amazing courtship display and offers eight tanka prose that explore aspects of human courtship rituals and relationships: humorous, nostalgic, romantic, disturbing, sad.

Barbara Curnow’s “Consent,” one of shortest pieces in the anthology and quite possibly the most chilling, leaves many questions unanswered:

I stand naked. The air is cool. He sits in front of me, looking. Then he tells me to turn, very slowly, right around. I am 17, just. I stare at the floor as I turn, but my skin still prickles beneath his gaze.

what happened
to the toddler
the one
who wielded the word
‘No!’

Kathy Kituai’s “Ebb and Flow” explores with depth and tenderness an entirely different aspect of the relationship between the sexes. The title refers to the seaside setting but can be read as a metaphor for the tides of human life and love. Uncle Jack no longer wants to visit his wife, because, he says, “She doesn’t know us anymore.” His niece replies “Yes, but we know who she is.”

a woman pauses
at a nursing home
as if listening...
the ebb and flow
hard to hear over the TV

The third section, called “The Sudden Sun,” refers to the destruction of the lyrebird’s habitat by logging and bushfires. The summer of 2019-20 was known as “Black Summer” in Australia because of the extent and intensity of the bushfires. Two of the eight pieces in this section directly reference that terrible time. Carole Harrison’s “Black and White Summer” recalls with affection the flock of magpies that frequented her home—“Even on catastrophic smoke-laden days they chortle“—and closes with this tanka:

black and white quardling
in a time of drought
even now
I see them, hear them
taste the smoke of memory

Liz Lanigan’s “There Was a Time” speaks with regret of “the trees I logged to build the house I never built,” and Michelle Brock writes movingly of the struggle of Aboriginal peoples for recognition and inclusion in the government. Like the lyrebird, they too are casualties of the incursions into their homeland. Other pieces explore the impact of summer sun on everything from an overheated tennis match to moths, ants, and spiders.

In “tiny titans,’ Ailsa Brown quietly rejoices in a hard-won sense of belonging in this diverse and complex land:

dragon fly
settles on my arm
in its large eyes
I am part of its world
busy among the shrubs

The fourth section, “Sung in Nature’s Colors,” celebrates the earth- and sky-tones of the lyrebird’s magnificent plumage, and is most notable for the sheer variety of colors and colorful themes expressed in its eight tanka prose. Here we travel to Africa, Japan, India, Spain.

But these are not mere travelogues; tanka prose is by its nature a reflective medium, and these pieces are no exception. In “Round and Round,” Hazel Hall ponders what to do with a tattered, greasy rupee note lurking in the narrator’s rucksack:

turning over
the meaning of value
round and round
something nothing
nothing something

once again contemplate
tossing these few rupees into the waste of the past
then her mind will be cleansed of lurking images
little children who have learned to stretch
their hands out to strangers.

In “Dance of Denial,” Gerry Jacobson similarly ponders the “emails [that] flood the inbox: refugees, endangered species, global heating, global hating, corruption, pulp mills, Aboriginal rights,” and the guilt he feels at his failure—or inability—to do much about these issues. He concludes with a rueful and relatable tanka:

slowly
dancing with myself
through blurred eyes
sensing the others
I am not alone

The fifth section, “Echoes,” tells us that lyrebirds have their own songs but also mimic other voices. Here we hear the voices of crow and raven and children at play; mindless music, frog song and flood. Tanka themselves, of course, are “small songs,” a fact reflected
in the musical and moving tanka to be found throughout this volume:

rain trickles
down the drainpipe
singing...
what soundtrack do I choose
to face uncertainty?
	~from “Acceptance” by Michelle Brock

song lines—
are they hidden
in the earth?
she begins to learn
wisdom of the elders
	~ from “At the Summit” by Hazel Hall

The title of the final section, “Moon Markings,” refers to the rows of transparent crescent “moons” that decorate the large tail feather of the superb lyrebird. The moon is directly present in only three of the eight pieces in this section, but light sparkles throughout, in a crystal goblet, a spray of icy water, glass jars of beetroot, shimmering spiderwebs.

In the opening of “Dingo roaming,” Mira Walker likens MRI to moonlight:

I defer the MRI with nonchalance. Later, the results arrive,
with exuberant assurance from the front desk. The call
from the clinic surprises me. Pictures appear online but
there is a wait for explanation.

resonant
with silvery silence
magnetic images
shattered moonlight
among the snow gum’s bones

A mirage of supple strength slinks away.

The moon’s influence is more subtle in Carmel Summers’s “The House at Assembly Row: 1768,” where she describes a funeral procession on its way to the Jewish burial ground:

When they hear it coming, children rush outdoors to perch on door stoops and swing on lamp posts. The slow drumbeat as a coffin is carried past houses that line the Great Essex Road, on its way to the Jewish burial ground at the end of the row. A crowd of mourners follows, some walking, some in coaches, clothes rent at the heart. Wives, servants crowd out to watch, heads bowed. A murmur passes through onlookers, sharing the name of the dead.

After the mourners pass,

the street transforms
from passage for the dead
back to life again—
a pulse of people, horses
coaches, cries of hawkers

Death and life transform into each other, like the waxing and waning of the moon.

The section, and the anthology, end with a beautifully constructed piece by Michelle Brock, “last glimpse.” Comprising “threads of memory” of her father, it includes four embedded tanka and a fifth that is skillfully braided into the prose:

breezes whisper
in the shadows
at dusk
after rain
in the bush cemetery

Each of the five braided lines fits seamlessly with the prose that comes before or after. The fifth line is followed by a concluding poem:

scattering
my father’s ashes...
I regret
not knowing more about
the lives and songs of birds

…. which may seem an odd thing to regret under the circumstances, but each of the preceding embedded tanka refers to birds: cormorant, raptor, caged bird, crow. And each bird serves as a metaphor for the narrator’s emotions, so it is really herself that she wishes to better understand. The overall effect is subtle, poignant, and powerful.

In this brief review, I have unfortunately had to omit many of the fine poems and poets that make this anthology sing. The sheer variety of voices and visions, coupled with the consistently high quality of the work, testifies to the capacity of tanka prose to explore and express the roots that hold us, as readers and writers, as poets and people. I hope you will be inspired to obtain a copy and explore for yourself. You will be richly rewarded.

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Note: The Lyrebird Tanka Circle includes the following poets whose work is featured in this anthology: Michelle Brock, Ailsa Brown, Barbara Curnow, Sue Donnelly, Amelia Fielden, Hazel Hall, Carole Harrison, Gerry Jacobson, Kate King, Kathy Kituai, Liz Lanigan, Carmel Summers, Mira Walker, and Tony Steven Williams.

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About the Reviewer

Jenny Ward Angyal has written poetry since the age of five and Japanese short-form verse since 2008. The author or co-author of seven books of tanka, tanka sequences, and tanka-prose and haibun, she’s a global moderator of the Inkstone Poetry Forum. She lives with her husband and one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in central North Carolina.

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