The Radif Challenge: Stone
The sugar issue is now online. The "special issues" link at the right will take you to its index; the main page for 2008 also has a link to it. The first three radif challenges have been so successful that the radif challenge is now a standing feature of The Ghazal Page.
The radif for the new challenge is "stone." Write Persian-style ghazals of five to twelve shers using "stone" as the radif. Then I will draw on the ghazals submitted to publish a special issue of the 2009 Ghazal Page.
- Deadline: March 01, 2009
- Radif: stone
- Format: a Persian ghazal with five to twelve shers
- Limit: no more than three ghazals per poet
- Prize: publication in a special issue of The Ghazal Page
- Submission: Use the link below to submit a ghazal:
You have until March 1, 2009 to answer the "stone" challenge. I hope to see so many good "stone" ghazals that I can use them in a large issue like the "clouds and rain," "moon," or "sugar" issues.
As a variation on the radif challenge, you may use "stone" as the monorhyme (qafia) of an Arabic style ghazal. You may choose to use microrhyme — rhyming only on the "n" of "stone." To do this variation, please read David Jalajel's articles on the Arabic ghazal in English and on microrhyme in the ghazal..
Background of the Challenge
In an article in Reorientations/Arabic and Persian Poetry (edited by Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych and published by Indiana University Press in 1994), Franklin D. Lewis describes how poets used the same radif in a number of poems, showing their skill and wit.
Lewis's article suggested the radif challenges for The Ghazal Page; the challenge is to write a ghazal using a set radif. The results of the first two challenges show how adept ghazal poets can be at using familiar, universal imagery.
