Michael L. Evans is retired and currently lives in the Puget Sound area of Washington, after living most of his life in the San Diego area. He spends his time playing with two of his young grandsons, and writing haiku and other poetic forms that interest him. He has been publishing his haiku since 1997, and has recently begun to publish rengay, cinquain, and tanka. His original interest in tanka stems from the writings of Saigyo, Ono no Komachi, and Izumi Shikibu. He cites Margaret Chula's book: Always Filling, Always Full, as the book that made him want to write his own tanka - and Modern Japanese Tanka: Makoto Ueda, as the book that showed him the ways he could express his own personal voice, within the tanka form. He finds the freedom of modern tanka to be the near-perfect form to explore oneself, and looks forward to writing many more.