Sunflower Tanka: A 2025 Anthology of Tanka, Tanka Prose, & Experimental Tanka

by Colleen M. Chesebro, Robbie Cheadle

170 pages, Paperback

Published December 3, 2025

About the author

Colleen M. Chesebro grew up in a large city in the Midwest. Keen on making her own way in the world, she joined the United States Air Force after graduation to tour the world and find herself. To this day, that search continues.

An avid reader, Colleen M. Chesebro rekindled her love of writing poetry after years spent working in the accounting industry. These days, she loves crafting syllabic poetry, flash fiction, and creative fiction and nonfiction.

In addition to poetry books, Chesebro’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry.

She’s an avid supporter of her writing community on tankatuesday.com by editing the Sunflower Tanka Anthology, a yearly syllabic poetry anthology dedicated to tanka, tanka prose, & other experimental tanka forms.

In January 2022, Colleen founded Unicorn Cats Publishing Services to assist poets and authors in creating e-books and print books for publication. In addition, she creates book covers for Kindle and print book versions.

Chesebro lives in the house of her dreams in mid-Michigan, surrounded by the Great Lakes, with her husband and two (unicorn) cats, Chloe & Sophie.

Find Colleen at Tanka Tuesday at www.tankatuesday.com.

Find Colleen’s author blog at www.colleenchesebro.org.

Reviews

[Joy Kidney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanka is a specific type of poem, with different types defined in the introduction. Poets from around the world participate in Colleen Chesebro's Tanka Tuesday on the internet--to celebrate the art of syllabic poetry, so this collection of poems from dreams were written by poets from Australia and Indonesia to England and Ireland, Italy and Japan, Romania and South Africa, and the United States.

Three poems are featured by each writer with their website noted in a short intro. At the end, contributing editors Robbie Cheadle and Colleen Chesebro highlighted poems to comment on. Robbie also designed the lovely cover. A delightful collection.

[Yvette Calleiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful book of poetry. I read the first edition and loved it. This collection was incredibly wonderful. There were so many different poets, and I loved how each one interpreted the theme of dreams just a bit differently. I also love the variety of formats. I especially loved the tanka prose and the garland tankas, most likely because they weave a story through the poem. I also love the taiga poems within this collection. This anthology includes poets from all over the world, uniting voices through poetry. At the end, the two poets who created the book highlighted their favorites and explained why those poems were chosen. Truly, this is a gorgeous book of poetry, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the beauty of the written word. :-)

[Paul Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful collection on the theme of Dreams and well worth reading, dipping into and coming back to over time.