Willawaw Journal

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Willawaw Journal

Willawaw Journal is an online magazine for poetry and art, published twice a year–Fall and Spring. Each issue features the poem prompt of a northwest poet laureate and sometimes a model response from the editor. Our mission is to encourage writers and artists to create, and to generate a community where a diversity of voices is welcome.

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For the Fall 2024 issue of Willawaw, we looked at the ghazal as prompt. Explored poets talking about the form and read examples. Links included below. (As always, you can ignore the prompt.)

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Poet Laureate Poem Prompt—Fall 2024: The Ghazal

Denver Butson, Agha Shahid Ali, and Robert Bly

Denver Butson uses the 5 stanza series of couplets, drawing the first line from another poet or writer as a jumping off point. He repeats the same word at the end of the first two lines, and then at the end of the couplets that follow which is the traditional form of the ghazal.
For more on his approach, read here: https://inside.ewu.edu/willowspringsmagazine/denver-butson/

 

Robert Bly interprets the form as needing longer lines that don’t really fit on the page in English, so he has resorted to 3-line stanzas. He does not always rely on end-rhymes but weaves some repeated rhymes through the poem. He celebrates the tradition of emulating other poets and using cultural allusions and takes great liberties with the form which you can do also!

Read “Growing Wings” here: https://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/2014/02/robert-bly-growing-wings-ghazal.html

Here is an interview in which he discusses the ghazal: https://robertbly.com/int_10.html

 

Agha Shahid Ali is an exiled poet from Kashmir who leans on the traditional form. Read “Of Light” here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=41175

Ali writes: “The ghazal is made up of couplets, each autonomous, thematically and emotionally complete in itself… once a poet establishes the scheme—with total freedom, I might add—she or he becomes its slave. What results in the rest of the poem is the alluring tension of a slave trying to master the master.”
For more on his approach, read here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/agha-shahid-ali

 

More About the Poet Laureate Poem Prompt

The Editor

Rachel Barton is a poet, teacher, writing coach, and editor. She earned a B.A. in English from West Virginia University where she also pursued graduate studies in the art of printmaking. Drawn to Alaska by an older sister, she continued to pull lithographs at the Visual Arts Center until her new family began to manifest. From there, she dove into clay and watercolor. Upon her arrival in the Northwest 25 years later, she earned a Masters in Teaching from Western Oregon University. It was while teaching that she became acquainted with the Oregon Writing Project where she resumed her writing life.
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