The music challenge is closed. Please return about 1 February 2012 for a new challenge.
For this challenge, the theme is music. There is an immense vocabulary to draw on for rhymes (qafiya) and repeated phrases (radif), as well as for other aspects of the ghazal. Ghazals submitted to this challenge might focus on musicians, composers, instruments, genres, technical terms, and more. You might even use a musical form as the basis for your ghazals: twelve-bar blues, for instance, might work well with the tercet ghazal.
You have a range of formats to choose from:
Please note that the Persian/Urdu ghazal differs from the Arabic in form, although definitions such as Answers.com do not make this distinction.
To be considered for the special issue presenting this challenge, your ghazal must follow the theme and format specifications.
If there are special concerns of format in your ghazals — spacing, style, etc — attach a document that shows the formatting you want. It can be in Word DOC, Open Office, WordPerfect, or PDF format.
For this challenge, the theme is change. Change is both abstract and varied, so there is a lot of scope for responses. Here are some suggestions for limiting the theme:
You have a range of formats to choose from:
Please note that the Persian/Urdu ghazal differs from the Arabic in form, although definitions such as Answers.com do not make this distinction.
To be considered for the special issue presenting this challenge, your ghazal must follow the theme and format specifications.
If there are special concerns of format in your ghazals — spacing, style, etc — attach a document that shows the formatting you want. It can be in Word DOC, Open Office, WordPerfect, or PDF format.
The theme of the new challenge is astronomy. As with the books challenge, the astronomy challenge focuses on a theme rather than a common radif or format. (See under "The Format" the formal possibilities for this challenge. You may submit up to three ghazals on some astronomical theme. The form of the ghazals may be "traditional" (Persian/Urdu), Arabic, tercets, "free," or some variation of any of these. Note that a "free" ghazal must be in couplets or single long lines and have "jumps" between couplets or lines.
Astronomy is an encompassing topic, including planets, stars, asteroids, comets, nebulae, galaxies, dark matter, supernovae, black holes, quantum foam, string theory, constellations, auroras, space vehicles, even our sun and moon — anything beyond the earth's atmosphere, even perceived from down at the bottom of this lovely gravity well.
The Ghazal Page has published several examples of ghazals with astronomical themes: "Leonard's Moon," by Taylor Graham, "Of Stars," by David Lunde, and the results of a challenge with the radif "moon." These are examples of traditional Persian/Urdu ghazals. Here's an example of a free ghazal, with fourteen-syllable lines. It also has a signature couplet.
You have a range of formats to choose from:
Please note that the Persian/Urdu ghazal differs from the Arabic in form, although definitions such as Answers.com do not make this distinction.
To be considered for the special issue presenting this challenge, your ghazal must follow the theme and format specifications.
If there are special concerns of format in your ghazals — spacing, style, etc — attach a document that shows the formatting you want. It can be in Word DOC, Open Office, WordPerfect, or PDF format.
Previous challenges focused on form, with a common radif or the Arabic ghazal form. This challenge focuses on a theme — books. Even in an electronic world of text flowing on screens, the book remains valuable for us. We have all been influenced for better or worse by books or by a book.
For this challenge, write a ghazal with the theme "book" or "books." You may emphasize a specific book, books in general, a genre, a physical type of book. The ghazal you submit should explore the experience of books. For format, you have a number of options, explained below.
Your focus should be a book, several books, or a genre. While you may mention authors (naturally!), please keep the focus on the books. Physical format of the book(s) may also be important: the direction in which your native language is written, for instance, or the type of binding, the type of paper and cover. You might consider eBooks as well.
You have a range of formats to choose from:
Please note that the Persian/Urdu ghazal differs from the Arabic in form, although definitions such as Answers.com do not make this distinction.
To be considered for the special issue presenting this challenge, your ghazal must follow the theme and format specifications.
If there are special concerns of format in your ghazals — spacing, style, etc — attach a document that shows the formatting you want. It can be in Word DOC, Open Office, WordPerfect, or PDF format.
This challenge is to write an English ghazal using the Arabic approach described by David Jalajel.
There are some key aspects to this challenge:
Here are some options for you to decide:
Send your ghazals (1 –) for this challenge by 1 March 2010. It's preferable if you send them in the body of a text-only email, but if you wish, send an attached word-processor document. I should be able to open almost any format. In your email, tell me that
I will look forward to a number of excellent poems.
There are several examples in David Jalajel's article on using the Arabic approach to the ghazal. You may group lines as he has done. Here's a ghazal I wrote as an example in addition to David Jalajel's:
Before pouring olive oil into the pan, I chop garlic
on the wooden board, opening a garden with each strike.
My Darling rises before me, before the sun and Sirius,
the star of these Dog Days of summer, star of heat stroke.
In the yard, two rabbits sit calmly, pausing from their meal
to keep an eye on me and the dog, fearful of any trick.
Ingmar Bergman died today; I imagine his funeral filmed
in his manner, shades of gray, its settings cool and stark.
Paging through Arberry's translation of Rumi's ghazals,
I pause for any passage where the words find me awake.
Gino, I can't imagine why you spend your time threading
words on these shaky lines, never naming What you seek.
Here is the same ghazal with each "couplet" presented as a single line:
Before pouring olive oil into the pan, I chop garlic on the wooden board, opening a garden with each strike.
My Darling rises before me, before the sun and Sirius, the star of these Dog Days of summer, star of heat stroke.
In the yard, two rabbits sit calmly, pausing from their meal to keep an eye on me and the dog, fearful of any trick.
Ingmar Bergman died today; I imagine his funeral filmed in his manner, shades of gray, its settings cool and stark.
Paging through Arberry's translation of Rumi's ghazals, I pause for any passage where the words find me awake.
Gino, I can't imagine why you spend your time threading words on these shaky lines, never naming What you seek.
Either format is fine for this challenge.
You may read the results of the challenges via the special issues index. If reading these poems inspires you to write ghazals that would have fit the contest, please send them along for possible publication in a regular issue. If you browse the last couple of years' issues, you'll see some ghazals written like that.