Green Smoke Rising, Tanka

Green Smoke Rising, 2006

Print on photographic paper, edition of 100, 1000mm x 605 mm.

£265 framed, £200 unframed

Tanka are an ancient form of Japanese Poetry still used today.  The Tanka Seasons and Green Smoke Rising artworks are a response to Japanese Tanka poetry written about a thousand years ago, between 1250 AD and 850 AD.  The poems are ancient but the imagery expressed in them is still true today.  I linked the old poems with contemporary imagery and technology to produce digital prints.   Their content resonates across time and space from the Far East to the West.

I discovered the Tanka poems and oriental aesthetics while studying at York St John University in 2005 and 2006 under the guidance of  Dr Hisashi Nakamura.  Dr Nakamura is a founder of the Anglo-Japanese Tanka society (www.tankasociety.com)  and originally translated the poems into English.  He later published them in a book The Floating Bridge: Tanka Poems in English (ISBN 978-1-85072-360-8).  

Alas!

How sad to think

That my body will end in pale green

After all,

A mist over the fields.

Poem by Ono No Komanchi, c.850, translated by Dr Hisashi Nakamura.