I think I said something in my last post about starting this series to make sure I posted at least once a week, but I was so overwhelmed by trying to decide what to write about last week I didn't get round to writing anything!
Pete had asked me to compose something on the current photo exhibition at Artland Gallery, which is called Iraq - The Space Between, by Christopher Bangert. He'd also asked me to go to the Identity event at Urbis' Black Panther exhibition and respond to that, plus I had a gig in Lancaster on sunday for which I was trying to write something new, and I wanted my form for the week to be the ghazal, which took a bit more research, reading and thinking about than the fib. However, when I went to look at the Iraq exhibition, I realised that a Ghazal would be an ideal form through which to write about the images, so now I'm terminating a pair of air-borne endothermic vertebrates with one rock-based projectile.Â
A ghazal is an ancient Arabic form of poetry, traditionally set to music. It has a very tight, strict structure in its classical form, and in many English language poets have loosened these rules, dubbing their attempts 'bastard ghazals'. But basically, the form is a series of no less than five couplets which rhyme AA, BA, CA, etc though some poets, myself included, choose to use AB, CB, DB etc. There is also often a repeated refrain at the end of each couplet. The couplets must keep the same metre (I've used iambic pentameter) and are supposed to be self contained, with the meaning not allowed to run on from one couplet to the next. There is an interesting discussion of the disjointed feel that this creates in the 'bastard ghazal' article I've linked to above, with the meaning of the poem being contained in the gaps between the couplets as much as in the lines themselves. This is a quality I thought would lend itself well to an exhibition titled 'The Space Between'.
In writing my attempt, I chose a few of the images that had struck me and wrote a couplet for each one. I struggled to find many '-eth' rhymes, so I used the same ones twice. My rhyming dictionary had Ashtoreth and Japheth, which as characters from Hebrew mythology might have made an interesting cultural parallel had I been clever enough to work them in, but I didn't want people to have to spend too much time on wikipedia to make sense of the poem! I'm using 'shibboleth' in the sense of 'a common saying or belief that has little current meaning or truth'. Hope you enjoy.
Electric cord binds tight my wrists, the dogs
Devoured the circumstances of my death. For Freedom.
I lost you in the stampede, now you're found.
Were my feet amongst those that stopped your breath? For Freedom.Â
At dawn I kneel as US soldiers search
For terrorists, that tired old shibboleth. For Freedom.
The morgue floor is my bed, my shroud a face-towel
And my piss-stained shorts. The dignity of death. For Freedom.
A crisp white sheet surrounds my face, its peace
So far from panicked feet that stole my breath. For Freedom
A blindfold torn from my marital bed, a mark
Drawn on my head; Security's shibboleth. For Freedom