Poetry

Poets being poets

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 16 Comments

The same drumbeat. The same debates. The same monotone. On repeat. Poets reading poets, poets critiquing poets, poets writing elegies to poetry, poets annoyed that no one else reads a poem or cares. And yet there are stats to prove every point, stats to suit every argument, stats to the contrary. There are enough books to fit a rack, a shelf, a corner or two in a store. Poets being readers. Poets being poets.

For every raised voice that claims to have read a Wordsworth or a Rumi (no, these days is it Darwish and Rupi), there are a hundred that cannot name two contemporary poets. Not even one from their own country. What those wasting, shrivelling, screaming poets need, as they talk with the moon and measure the rhyme of a sea they have never seen, are cheerleaders. People who aren’t poets. People who don’t care if anyone else reads a poem or cares. People who will hype a poem, a verse, a line, a poet. Did I say that in the plural? No, a poet who thinks she is a metaphor for something yet to be known, who shuffles reality and shade, dealing cards with no hope to win or lose, that poet needs just one cheerleader. Just one. So that the morning starts with kindness. So that the afternoon sky stays up where it should be, bearing its sun. So that the night will fill itself with words like fireflies, a suggestion of light and motion that rejects being bound to a page. Think of it. A poet somewhere. A poem somewhere. Both birthed in anonymity. Both complete just from being. Just from writing. Still needing to be read. Still hoping to be read. The idea of a fruit, still waiting on a bee.

unwrapping its sky —
                                 one by one
the night shows off its stars

Learning ‘Liwuli’

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 10 Comments

The form is called Liwuli and it seems to be all over poetry town! It has rules, lots of them:
The Liwuli has 3 verses:
The first has 31 syllables typically in prose. Has to contain instruction(s). (Imperative.)
The second has 14 syllabes in 3 lines. Can be anything.
The third has 19 syllabes in any number of lines and should be in the form of one or more questions.

This is the one from @dsnake1 who introduced me to the form.

And here’s my first shot at it:

Stepping on words

Write like you dance, words twirling with abandon, heart kinetic, soul separated from body, both moving to a cosmic rhythm.

Awkward, embarrassed
once again
we parry like strangers.

What if we had stopped that night?
What if I had stopped to hear the music within?

Version 2 (going with the rule that the third stanza should have 10 syllables in 2 lines – no idea which is right, but choosing this one for future Liwulis)

Write like you dance, words twirling with abandon, heart kinetic, soul separated from body, both moving to a cosmic rhythm.

Awkward, embarrassed
once again
we parry like strangers.

What if we had heard the music within?

Interlude (39)

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ Leave a comment

It was the same dream. The train rumbling through nameless
villages when something ran across the tracks and the driver

braked at the…

A poem from July 2018, first published in the ‘Abridged’ magazine, that I included as Part 39.3 of the series “A story in many unequal parts, some missing”. Check it out here.

Interlude (38)

~ Rajani Radhakrishnan ~ 2 Comments

How does a wound
wait for an apology? How
does a sky wait…

A new poem today in this interlude post that becomes Part 39.2 of the series “A story in many unequal parts, some missing”. I’ve used the same form I did in Part 45 and perhaps, it works for what I was trying to write. Check it out here. Also, a generous review of this series by a fellow poet/blogger.