RESULTS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL EROTIC TANKA CONTEST 2008

It was an honor and a pleasure to read the 216 erotic tanka that were submitted from the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Romania, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, for The First International Erotic Tanka Contest. I was amazed by all the entries that poured in.

I thoroughly read all the entries four times and then put aside the top twenty-five tanka. Then I began the difficult task of narrowing down the entries to the top three winners and three honorable mentions.

Here are the First, Second and Third Place Winners.

FIRST PLACE: $100 Natalia L. Rudychev


i wish
my kisses
were the cherry petals
that stream all over you
in April wind

Natalia L Rudychev


This tanka was so perfectly composed, that it could be read as a one-breath tanka. Every word was so carefully written, that it flowed naturally into the next word, seamlessly. It conveyed a deep sensual love, with gentle undertones of erotica. The fluidity of fleeting kisses, the color and perfume of falling cherry petals, lightly caressing every inch of her lover’s body, caught in the warmth of April wind. Who wouldn’t want to be loved like that?


SECOND PLACE: $50 Marjorie Buettner, USA


I wake
to feel your touch
entering my dreams
there you untie the canoe
and we drift under wild stars


This tanka was both sensual and evocative. A woman wakes to her lover’s touch entering, like a silent thief, in the night, into her hiding place of reveries. A secret place that few can enter or will ever enter. Once into the other lover’s dream world, she unties a canoe, that has been waiting to be released, where they drift effortlessly perhaps for years or for just a brief night. They float and sail beneath ambrosial stars. Stars that are savage, wild with passion, and who knows where those constellations will take them.


THIRD PLACE: $25 Claudia Coutu Radmore, Canada


night blooming cereus
its soundless blossoming
lost in ours
this morning’s serenity
of spent grace

Claudia Coutu Radmore


This tanka was strong in its subtle erotic beauty of two people making love. The tanka poet equates it to the silent blossoming of a night blooming cereus, a desert plant that blooms once a year in mid-summer for only one night. These two lovers openly surrender, not just their bodies, but, the essence of their inner being, the depth of their souls, petal by petal. There is a stillness after making love; after the fusion of two souls, two hearts, in perfect communion. Now, among the morning dew, the morning star, there is a tranquility, beyond words. A serenity that penetrates every fiber, the spent grace, of sacred love making.


Here are the three Honorable Mentions, in alphabetical order.


wild sea oats
cling closely to the dunes
on a dark shore...
I abandon my taboos
for forbidden waters

an’ya USA


just the two of us
in a reckless night
shapes stretch
and touch the dark part
of each other

Stanley Pelter UK


star-dusted skin
in mellow moonlight
her velvet touches
spinning me off the planet
fulfilling wildest desires

Barbara A. Taylor Australia


I wish to thank all the tanka poets who entered this First International Erotic Tanka Contest and for the privilege of reading their works. Thank you for making it a success.

Respectfully submitted,
Pamela A. Babusci, Judge