Day Ten

Welcome back, everyone, for Day Ten – we’re now one-third of the way through NaPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is grapeling, whose poem for Day Nine expresses the fear behind three of the simplest words.

Day 10’s poet in translation is Pakistan’s Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Faiz was known particularly for his ghazals, a traditional Urdu form of poetry. Six of his poems, translated into English, can be found here, and a number of additional poems are available here.

And now for our (optional) prompt! I know yesterday’s was a hard one for many of you, although I also was also very touched by the vulnerability and bravery displayed in your poems! But today’s prompt should be a little bit less emotionally involving — a nice chaser for yesterday. Today’s prompt comes to us from Lillian Hallberg. She challenges us to write a “book spine” poem. This involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. Some fun images of book spine poems can be found here. If you want to take things a step further, Lillian suggests gathering a list of titles from your shelves (every third or fifth book, perhaps, if you have a lot) and using the titles, as close to the originals as possible, to create a poem that is seeded throughout with your own lines, interjections, and thoughts. Happy writing!