Meharoona the Writer

When you finally get that book you've been waiting for so long ... (actual book not virtual) in your hands, what do you do with it?

Recall! Recall! Recall back to 2020 - I joined in on TELEPHONE - a fun heart-centred creative endeavour. I was sent an image and I interpreted it to create this visual poem... and it kept going, going, going...900 artists from 72 countries Telephone is now LIVE, check it out https://phonebook.gallery/. A perfect time for artists/creatives around the world to uplift us all. With love and gratitude to Nathan and the TELEPHONE team! <3

i applied Erasure to a 1200 word paper - a piece outlining methodology for a PHD.... YIKES!!! HAHAHAAAAA There is a HUGE huge freeing power in black ink over text, then grabbing the words left behind and crafting a poem out of these (without switching the order) is quite liberating like decluttering... I LOVE Erasures especially with challenging texts like academic works... Here's my Erasure Poem vast web drove me to map, stand, connect with common life stories,... serve to activate relations. Villagers present in multiple spaces, puzzle across scales of human influence, faced with chains between human and sacred [shrine] embrace and centre human. Meharoona Ghani [placed shrine in square brackets because I like the sentence with our without ‘shrine’] Erasure aka blackout poetry aka pound poetry: https://poets.org/glossary/erasure See more

Looking for a writing prompt? Nothing like spontaneous writing to open up the creative juices! Technique: watch a short video, then time 5 min to write in response to the video - either in verse or haiku or anything... Free the mind.... Here's my piece: drum soul to the bone a lifeless beat once hunted stolen this chanted hum now unwrapped behind dark shadow rhythm pure tender salvation Meharoona Ghani inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAj1hsXp18c

A wonderful question from Traci Skuce "Write Your Story Society" - "If someone asks why you're a writer, can you honestly answer them?" Yes I can. One line answer - because i want to be seen and heard. ... The longer story - I distinctly remember 3 moments i chose to write and why. During my youth (well tbh well into my early 20s), I was very shy and quiet and tbh i thought i was not smart. Because of this when I would speak I often felt unheard. The moments: 1. my grade 3 teacher assigned a poetry assignment. we were to go outside (behind our school APES for short LOL - alexander park elementary school in Golden BC). i climbed up the hill behind the school known as Selkirk Heights and wrote my first poem surrounded by trees - called it "I am the Spring Breeze". It won the gr 3 contest and my teacher (who excelled in calligraphy ink/art) "calligraphied" it and framed it in front of the class as the winner. that was (and still is) my proudest moment. 2. around age 10 to 13ish - I painted and then got a diary. I perused the Avon catalogue that the door to door "Avon lady" left behind and selected a "Dear Diary" book. My mom got for me (or maybe i had saved enuf allowance money don't remember) and i wrote in that diary daily.... school girl crushes and arguments with my sister or parents, angst. Then one day my mom said, if there is anything i want to talk about, i can tell her... "Did you read my diary?!" "No", "Yes you did!"... I took that diary and threw it into the burn barrel (used back then to burn paper in small town backyards) it all went up in flames. As a result, I began to write poetry a safe place to hide. 3. Age 8, our family visit to Nairobi East Africa - my teenage cousin asked what i'd like to be when i grow up. A writer. I've been writing ever since. love always Meharoona (your light of the moon)

by what measure do we reckon a poem worthy or unworthy? Not by any measure that the outer world has to offer. Only one rule applies: ‘A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.’ And how might a poet recognize this ‘necessity?’ Only by making the ‘descent into yourself and into your solitariness.’ In this isolated space, the world’s criteria drop away." - Lewis Hyde, pg. xxvi in 'Letters to a Young Poet' by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Today:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtkdF2JPELs Some, sometimes somewhere like to believe... this is water, sky, land, center of the world what has meaning and what does not, perhaps, even who has meaning and who does not. Yet, some, sometimes somewhere learn hard lessons to consciously decide, make efforts and commitments to be/think different(ly) become open. For some, sometimes somewhere in that openness awareness, choice, freedom, simplicity are found. And in that void, some, sometimes somewhere will choose to swim away Meharoona Ghani Inspired by This is Water 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace

"I love poetry because it translates the abstract to the concrete, the universal to the specific, and then translates it all back again. Poetry locates a specific person in a body, connected, necessarily, to all bodies in all places. It’s a signal between cells that connects the larger body, enables it to feel."

"The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth." ~ Rumi By far one of my most favourite quotes. On the ground I fell, trampled, by their frantic search, I lay waiting, calm,... insane mob far gone. Then rolled myself over, and found broken fragments protruding along my anterior. Sharp, edged jagged pieces of trampled shards stuck in me, now stained with blood, i tugged quick, placed each tiny beaten reflector, on the dirt road beside me, like a jigsaw, it came together. I leaned forward, peered into it. Shattered reflection stared back. Beautiful. Truth's broken. If too perfect then I would be God. Meharoona Ghani

Unleash release free... never been this lost for words haikus saved the past, once even Rumi did.... Open close unread books, stuck, been told just begin. How does an artist during pandemics, racisms, rights violations that seem to never end, most likely never will, continue to rise? I write. Meharoona Ghani

surrender yourself solitude on violin strings names not forgotten Meharoona Ghani https://youtu.be/_-fBma_LMhw

finger tips ended at a heart broken open life's corners exposed Meharoona Ghani