BJ’s Shadorma & Beyond – Landay – March 14, 2015

Joseph Wright. Widow of an Indian Chief, 1785. WikiArt.

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Hello everyone!  This is Jen again, greeting you from BJ’s Shadorma & Beyond.  Bastet and I hope you enjoyed writing in ABAB with Robert Frost.

For this week you have the choice of writing a shadorma (a non-rhyming six-line poem in 3/5/3/3/7/5), or a landay.

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The landay originated in Afghanistan.  It is a folk couplet that is oral in nature:

1. Twenty two syllables broken into two couplets
…(nine in the first, thirteen in the second);
2. Ends with a “ma” or “na” sound.
…This cannot be replicated in English;
3.  May contain end rhyme;
4.  Characterized by bawdiness, wit, and piercing truths
…despite the beauty of the language.

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I call. You’re stone.
One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.

— Rahila Muska

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You sold me to an old man, father.
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.

— Anonymous

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Landays often feature themes of war, separation, homeland, grief, and love.  [That is why I chose the painting by Joseph Wright.]

The Poetry Foundation describes landays as follows:

“… the couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.”

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I’ll make a tattoo from my lover’s blood
and shame every rose in the green garden.

— Malalai

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Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.

— Anonymous

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I would encourage you to visit the Landay page at Poetry Foundation. However – keep in mind that the subject matter may be politically sensitive and may be of a sensual nature.  Also, some of the images can be disturbing.  Still – it is well worth reading.

Thanks to Dom at Black and Write for introducing me to this form.  You can read Dom’s series of nested landays here.

 

Feel free to write a shadorma, a landay, or a series of nested landays.  When you have written your poem(s), please TAG them BJ’s Shadorma & Beyond and MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie. Then add your link to the Mister Linky widget below.

Good luck!
Jen

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