The Ghazal Project: Week Three & Four

The Ghazal Project, my ambitious write-one-ghazal-a-week project, was going quite well until the third week. I found out that one of my first poetry mentors, Rishma Dunlop, passed away, and I couldn’t bring myself to write a ghazal. I tried, but the words didn’t hold the weight that I wanted them to. The ghazal is a form that delves into themes of separation, longing, and loss, but in that moment, silence seemed more appropriate.  The unfortunate part of about not writing a ghazal that week was that people submitted so many gorgeous flowers as poetry possibilities. In a strange way, just the prompt of asking people what their favourite spring flowers are seemed fitting for a tribute to Rishma, as her first (and my favourite) book is aptly titled, ‘The Body of My Garden’.

So, in tribute to Rishma and the seeds she planted for many of us, here are the names of all the flowers that were offered that week:

While I fell short of my goal of writing a ghazal that week, I found myself inspired to write in other forms of poetry (which you can read on Facebook and Instagram).

My final week’s prompt was, “There’s nothing more comforting than…”.  One of the responses was, “you beside me” (Thank you Alia Pirani!)  I’d like to offer you this ghazal, a parting gift for following me on my #NPM16 journey (p.s- Israh is my pen name):