Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Middle Eastern Poetry meets Bollywood and more.






I went to a creative writing festival last weekend. Saw friends, had my picture taken with a hunky thriller writer (Picture later),learned all about Ghazals and won a prize.

I know you want to hear all about Urdu poery and Ghazals. I'm not a poet or Ghazal expert. I am facinated by a poem that has an overall theme, comprised of 5 to 15 couplets that must contain the over-all theme yet each stand alone, have a rhyming word in the second line of each couplet just before the refrain phrase and contains the poet's name in the last line of the last couplet. Other than that, it's a piece of cake. Oh, and it should be in Arabic, Urdu or lately, English.

The themes dwell upon love, loss of love, things that are missed, regreted, loss of home, the king.

Modern poets are using this poetic form to write poetry and love songs for Bollywood movies. The ancient poets and courtesans used to make them up in their heads and sing them at parties. For much more and many examples see: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5781

Careful, you could get hooked.

1 comment:

MyKids'Mom said...

As long as there have been Bollywood movies, there have been ghazals in Bollywood movies, in song form or not. They are a staple of Bollywood movies just like older actors romancing girls one third their age and heroines having nothing to do except look beautiful.
I love them all.

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