In the Garden

Over in the garden, Kenia offered a prompt on Poetry in Afghanistan.

image credit: Drew Harron via Compfight

under a Creative Commons License.

 

 

 

Kenia shared with us:  The folklorist Margaret Mills called Afghanistan, “The most literary illiterate society.”, with generations of women learning poetry through the rich oral tradition and passing it down to their children.

Women write and recite landai, two-line folk poems that can often be humorous, sexy, raging, tragic and  also deal with love, grief,  war, exile and Afghan independence. The success of the poetry form is attributed to it being easy to memorize, which is really important in a culture where women are poorly schooled and forbidden to write or read.

The word landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto. The poems are collective — no single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women.

 

Kenia's Challenge:

I invite you to find your voices and write a bunch of landai. Use a word or part of a sentence in someone else's poem for inspiration if necessary. Let landai pieces communicate among one another and resonate a message of non-compliance with the status quo.

 

 

Here is what I wrote: 

 

 

Memory like a curtain parts

revealing slate blue sky, my chance to embrace the light~

I must contain myself with words

they lift me out of darkness

like a kite soaring high above the bluest hope~

Without words-

darkness would swallow me whole.

Eyes like shadows form

words like yellow light shine in my endless garden of thought

protecting my sanity~

 

 

In the dark

faceless pods claw n' clamor to steal my soul

I tuck my secret dreams in whispers, to the sisters of my heart~