Face Reveal – a Half-Ghazal My son, age 10, is into Rumi, and his face reveal The Youtuber who does voices, and HowToBasic’s face reveal Rumi the murid to murshid Shams He whispered, away from all, I will make my face reveal Trust is built brick by brick, layer over layer Till, one day, the […]
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Last week I was subbing at the Vrije Universteit for the Genre, Literature and Analysis class for the Bachelor First Year course. I was teaching the villanelle and ghazal, which involved aspects of the forms as well as close reading. I found myself in a room full of bright, intelligent, engaged, and wise students. They […]
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Fall, leaves, fall By Emily Bronte Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day. (Source: Poetry Foundation) […]
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Aged five, an early memory, Rakesh Sharma travelling in space Mrs. Gandhi, he said, India appears best in the world, unravelling in space When I go back home, the Mango tree has shrunk The courtyard looks smaller, what is this diminishing space My sister pretty like a flower, a gentle soul She ended her relationship, […]
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Twitter informed me that today is World Poetry Day. Arundhati Roy says, “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” Thus, I am going to leave this here in case it matters. The House BY WARSAN SHIRE i Mother says there are locked rooms inside […]
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Some species can crack pavement with their shoots Source: The Miscarriage “if I consoled you it would make the loss your loss” —– How can Amit Majmudar’s words so relentlessly tangle the insides? Each line comes loaded, “his wealth of heartbeats.” I am currently reading his collection Dothead (2016). It has two ghazals. One of […]
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I have been writing poems a lot more than I usually do and reworking drafts of old poems. Perhaps due to my PhD work on the ghazal I tend to spend more time on structure and sound. Strict metrical scales and working with rhymes, refrains, provide me with an effective tool to have a dialogue with […]
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