Tan-renga, in the old tradition of renga (link verse), is the simplest form of ‘call and answer’ or ‘exchange’ between two poets, one submitting a haiku/hokku and the other one providing a response in two lines, traditionally 7/7 but now more flexible between 8 and 16 syllables and following the ‘link&shift’ used in renku. It is also compared to a tanka in two voices, the ‘twist’ in the tanka being provided by the change of voice and the shift in the response.

The exercise was devised to teach new sabaki and consists of every poet in a small assembly providing one of their haiku/hokku written on top of a sheet of paper. Offers are pooled together then each participant retrieves a sheet, not their own, and responds with a two-liner, folds the paper over, by leaving the original haiku visible, then puts it back in the pool. When each paper has three offerings, poets get their haiku back and choose the two-liner completing their haiku best to form the tan-renga.

The event organised by Andrew Shimield took place on 5 August 2025 at The British Library, with Kala Ramesh as our honoured guest. We ended up with the following 11 tan-renga in a relatively short time; and we still had time, after the sharing around, to read some of our own haiku.

singing out
the old year
‘hit the road Jack’

Mum’s blue eyes
a deeper shade

—Andrew Shimield; Iliyana Stoyanova

*

unkempt
railway track
buddleia reigns

on the platform a child
with far to go

—Jane Reed;David Jacobs

*

Euston Road walk
leaves among the coffee cups
nature still here

a crow perches
on the waste bin

—Svetla Mirova; Andrew Shimield

*

pet silkworms
the rustle of jaws munching
mulberry leaves

the saris my mother wore
are still with me

—Jenny Shepherd; Kala Ramesh

*

London skyline
a crane obscures
the cathedral

flashing through sunlight
a swooping gull

—Iliyana Stoyanova; Andrew Shimield

*

the home I sold…
yellow trumpets must be
carpeting the street

a handful of seeds
drying still in the backyard

—Kala Ramesh; Sprite

*

how delicately this fond unfurls
against the warm granite
of standing stones

medieval city
moss in the boulders

—Kim Richardson; Svetla Mirova

*

stormy day—
bookshelves full of adventure
and weird knowledge

shall I go out
or shall I stay in?

—Sprite; Allan Jarrett

*

   dried out and dead
           falling leaf
still lands with a crush
the old man’s yin and yang
       swing of the arms

—Allan Jarrett; Kala Ramesh

*

his last breath freed
the air within – it chose to spread
a cuckoo’s song far

the cuckoo’s fledgling
hears

—Muralidharan Parthasarathy; Jane Reed

*

spring rain;
the little girl teaches the cat
to dance

on the rooftop a gargoyle
gurgles with glee

—Issa (trans. by R H Blyth); Sprite

Further reading:

https://www.graceguts.com/essays/an-introduction-to-tan-renga

Write-up by Sprite

Photo by Ananthalakshmi Parthasarathy