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Use our tanka generator to write 5-7-5-7-7 poems in minutes. Build on 1,300 years of Japanese poetic tradition while keeping your own voice.
Create expressive tanka poems following the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable tradition
Tip: Tanka traditionally express personal feelings about nature, love, or seasons. The last two lines add personal reflection.
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The tanka is one of the oldest poetic forms still actively written today, over 1,300 years old and counting. Five lines. Thirty-one syllables. Enough room to hold a complete emotional arc, from observation to feeling. That's what makes it so compelling.
Our tanka generator helps you craft poems in this classic 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure. You get the bones of tradition with your own voice layered on top.
A tanka poem is a five-line form of Japanese poetry following a strict 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern. If you know haiku, think of tanka as its older, more emotionally complex sibling. The first three lines (called the kami-no-ku, or upper phrase) set a scene, often through nature imagery, while the final two lines (the shimo-no-ku, or lower phrase) turn inward toward personal reflection or emotional depth.
Tanka predates haiku by centuries. It was the dominant form of waka poetry in Japan's Heian period (794–1185), and poets like Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, and Ki no Tsurayuki shaped it into something deeply personal. Courtiers exchanged tanka as love letters, political commentary, and grief rituals.
What keeps tanka alive today is that emotional pivot between observation and feeling. You notice the frost on a windowpane, and then you remember your grandmother's kitchen. That turn, from outer world to inner world, is what separates tanka from a simple description. It's a form built for people who feel things deeply, which is why our birthday poem generator works so well alongside it for occasions that actually need to say something real.
Start with something concrete. A physical image. Not an abstraction like "love" or "sadness", but an actual thing you can see, touch, or hear. The creak of a screen door. Rain pooling in a pothole. Your tanka's first three lines should ground the reader in a specific moment, following that 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count. Count on your fingers if you have to. Seriously, even experienced poets do it.
Here's where most people go wrong: they treat all five lines as one continuous thought. A tanka needs a turn, usually between lines three and four. The upper phrase observes. The lower phrase feels. If your poem reads like a single run-on sentence spread across five lines, you've written a paragraph, not a tanka. The pivot is everything.
Another common mistake is forcing nature imagery where it doesn't belong. Yes, traditional tanka draws heavily on seasonal references and the natural world. But modern tanka can use urban settings, digital life, or domestic moments. The key isn't the subject, it's the structure of moving from external to internal. The best contemporary tanka poems are the ones that break from cherry blossoms and actually describe the world their authors live in.
Read your tanka out loud. Twice. The syllable count might be technically correct on paper, but if it sounds clunky when spoken, your reader will feel that friction. Japanese poetry prizes musicality, and English tanka should too. And don't end on a cliché. "And I felt so alone" will flatten even the most vivid opening image. End with something specific, a detail that carries the emotion without naming it.
"This night of no moon
there is no way to meet him.
I rise in longing—
my breast pounds, a leaping flame,
my heart is consumed in fire."— Ono no Komachi (9th century)
Komachi doesn't tell you she's heartbroken. She shows you a body on fire. The nature imagery of a moonless night becomes the impossibility of connection, and those final two lines escalate from longing to physical anguish. That's emotional depth earned through specifics, not stated through adjectives.
"In this world of ours
what resembles it? It is
like the dawn boat
rowed away and lost to sight
among the misty islands."— Saigyō (12th century)
Saigyō compares life itself to a boat disappearing into fog. The mist does the heavy lifting. You feel impermanence without him ever using the word.
"Whether I sit or lie
my empty mosquito net
is too wide for one—
how then this autumn night
can I sleep alone?"— Izumi Shikibu (11th century)
The mosquito net, such a small domestic object, becomes a measure of absence. Shikibu turns a household item into proof of loneliness. That's the technique worth stealing: find the ordinary object that reveals the feeling.
When you use our tanka generator to build your first draft, feed it specific details rather than broad themes. "Autumn loneliness" gives the tool less to work with than "empty chair on the porch, October wind." The more precise your input, the more personal your output feels. Try feeding it a single sensory detail, a sound, a texture, a color, and let the tool build the emotional arc around it.
Don't treat the first result as final. Generate a few versions, then mix your favorite lines from different outputs. If you enjoy shorter Japanese forms too, our haiku generator pairs well with tanka writing since both forms sharpen your instinct for compression.
A tanka is more than just a short poem, it's a conversation between two emotional states. The first three lines set a scene or feeling, and the last two lines pivot to a personal reflection or response. Think of it as a haiku that hasn't finished its thought yet. It's been Japan's dominant poetic form for over 1,300 years, predating haiku by centuries.
The biggest mistake writers make is treating all five lines equally. Don't. Lines 1–3 do one job, lines 4–5 do another. The turn between them, called the pivot, is where most beginners stumble. Avoid making every line end-stopped, and resist the urge to rhyme. Rhyme forces awkward word choices that kill the natural flow tanka depends on. Let the images breathe.
Here's what people get wrong: the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count is a guideline for English, not a law. Japanese tanka counts sound units called 'on,' which don't map neatly to English syllables. Modern tanka poets often bend the count to preserve natural speech rhythm. If you're choosing between a forced syllable count and a genuine emotional line, choose the emotion every time.
Honestly, it depends on what you feed it. AI handles structure well, syllables, line breaks, the pivot, but it needs your emotional specifics to avoid generic output. Tell it exactly what you're feeling, who it's for, and what image you want. If you're writing for someone special, something like a love-focused tanka with personal details tends to produce far more resonant results than a vague prompt.
Beyond the well-known Empress Jitō and Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, look up Yosano Akiko, her 1901 collection 'Midaregami' was scandalous for its time and reads as shockingly modern today. In contemporary poetry, Sanford Goldstein and Kozue Uzawa brought tanka into English in ways that still feel fresh. Lesser-known but worth finding: the tanka sequences written by Japanese-American poets during WWII internment, raw, spare, and unforgettable.