Pamela A. Babusci - A Thousand Reasons

A Thousand Reasons
Tanka
by Pamela A. Babusci

a thousand reasons
to leave him
a thousand reasons
to stay...
withering bamboo

~ Pamela A. Babusci

The first collection of tanka by internationally award-winning poet and acclaimed artist Pamela A. Babusci is now available from the author. A Thousand Reasons contains 120 individual tanka by Babusci—whose work is familiar to readers of literary journals and online sites in the U.S. and around the world—as well as an introduction by award winning U.S. poet Tom Clausen and an afterword by British poet/songwriter and editor of Three Lights Gallery Liam Wilkinson.

"She has a daring in her tanka that both upholds certain traditions as well as offers groundbreaking exploration of her uninhibited inner being," writes Clausen, in his Introduction. "This collection of tanka goes well beyond love to touch on every woman’s concerns and, for that matter, every person’s joys and struggles."

"The tanka poetry of Pamela A. Babusci is a rich tapestry of language and emotion; shining threads of Eastern and Western literary tradition interwoven against a kaleidoscope background of passion and deep self-awareness. An accomplished fine artist as well as poet, in A Thousand Reasons Babusci lays bare her soul to readers: these pages are her canvas and tanka her brush as she paints for us not only the rolling landscapes of her own heart, but the hills and valleys of our own as well," writes Cathy Drinkwater Better, award-winning poet, journalist.

Babusci has received honors in: the Museum of Haiku Literature Awards; the International Tanka Splendor Awards; the Yellow Moon Tanka Competition (Australia); the Kokako Tanka Competition (New Zealand); the Basho Festival Haiku Contests (Japan); the Suruga Baika Literary Festival (Japan); and Joint Third Prize for the First With Words International On-Line Haiku Competition—among others.

In 2008, she both sponsored and adjudicated the First International EroticTanka Contest.

Babusci is also an acclaimed haiga artist. Her illustration credits include the cover design for the recently published:

Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka 2008; and she served as logo designer/artist for Haiku North America in 2003 and 2007.

"Just as an artist stands at the canvas, surveying the clean white landscape before the painting is begun, I imagine Pamela A. Babusci to be forever teetering at the lip of another tanka," writes Wilkinson in his Afterword. "She is…a skilled craftswoman who is as much at home in her haiga as she is in her tanka, with a precise eye for composition that informs all of her work…Pamela seems perpetually willing to pour her entire self and soul into a form that seems, perhaps due to the dexterity of the artist, boundless…."

For more information about A Thousand Reasons, or to order, contact Pamela A. Babusci at:

150 Milford Street, Apt. 13, Rochester, NY 14615-1810 USA; or e-mail her at: moongate44(at)gmail(dot)com

A Thousand Reasons
Tanka by Pamela A.Babusci Self-published

July 2009; Rochester, NY, USA

Printed by Art Bookbindery

Cover art by the poet

Introduction by Tom Clausen

Afterword by Liam Wilkinson

Softcover; 80 pp.

Cover price: US $14.00

S&H US & Canada $2.50
Foreign $5.00