Fourteen NaPoWriMo Poems

Well, I'm half way through the month, and I've managed 14 poems. Some are better than others, but they are 14 poems that wouldn't have got written otherwise. The exercise has shown me that I can break the block.

Of course there is a problem with putting these poems out in the public domain. I won't be able to submit them to magazines or competitions, as being on this blog will count as 'previously published'. Also, they are unpolished, a very scary thing for someone who is used to obsessive editing and rewriting over a long period. There are bound to be flaws which I would have noticed with more time to ripen.

But the benefits of this speed production have been immense. It has motivated me to work intensively towards a moment of release. a letting go of each piece, which means that I can go on to start the next. It has also meant that I have to produce something - no excuses - so I have been working very hard on looking for prompts and inspiration.

I'm not sure I shall manage the full thirty by the deadline - there have been and will be the odd days when I actually have no time at all - but I aim to get as close as possible, and to catch up if I can.

How are other people doing? It would be great to hear your experience!

Poem 13 - Ghazal

Photo: Sally Douglas

Ghazal

Wind spatters stars against the sky.

Like my words hurled against the outstretched sky.

Questions curve the light of breaking day

Under the bell of the outstretched sky.

Like stones thrown at a window pane

Birds burst into the outstretched sky.

In the morning fields dawn pools in furrows

Pouring down from the outstretched sky.

I hold a cold stone in my outstretched palm.

And offer it up to the outstretched sky.

The day swoops down and steals the stone

And my burden is borne by the outstretched sky.

Sally Douglas

The idea of trying my hand at a ghazal came from reading a very good book on the practice of therapeutic writing: Writing Works: A resource handbook for therapeutic writing workshops and activities, edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field and Kate Thompson (Jessica Kingsley, 2006). I'd been thinking about writing therapies because I've been following Sali Mustafic's blog which links her therapy practice with the NaPoWriMo poems she is writing, and was flicking through this book when I came across the section by Jane Tozer on how the ghazal broke her writer's block.

The ghazal is a form of Arabic, Persian and Urdu origin. It comprises of 5 - 15 couplets. Each couplet must act as an independent poem as well as being part of the whole, and each must finish with the radif, the refrain which is set up in the first couplet. There is never an enjambment between the couplets. In the original form, the final couplet usually plays upon the poet's name, but Western versions have often dropped this characteristic. There's more about the ghazal here.

I found it strange at first, trying to fit my head into the form, but once I had tuned into the pacing of it, the way the radif works both as a line cast out and as an anchor, I found the ghazal a very satisfying form to explore.  I'm sure I shall be returning to it.