Do Now On a semantic map, brainstorm reasons why people write poetry. Draw bubbles off the main circle. What is the purpose of poetry? What motivates people to write poetry? Think about the different types of poetry (i.e. sonnet) and dominant content-based themes in poetry (i.e. love) to guide your brainstorming. An example response bubble is provided to the right. |
You will be using Twitter in your social studies class, so note the appearance and form of this tweet. The form of this "Critical Lens" practice will begin to familiarize you with the social media. Interpret the quote by putting it into your own words. Then on a separate sheet of paper, create a T-chart. Title it, "Poetry." Label the left column, "Affordances" and the right, "Constraints." Then, in Szybist terminology, brainstorm the "miracles" of poetry (what poetry can do) under "Affordances" and what poetry cannot do under "Constraints."
Non-Fiction Article Analysis:
The Secret Kabul Women's Poetry Club Read the BBC News article about a group of female poets in Afghanistan that have formed an underground poetry club in which they read the original poetry that reflects their opinions and attitudes toward the war in their land. Click on the button to the right to be directed to the website to read the article and watch the corresponding video. Think about the following question as you read and watch: How can poetry be a form of civil resistance equivalent to the African-Americans' protest, sit-in, and boycott methods?
Look at the map to the right. It shows the location of the Afghanistan capital, Kabul, in relation to the country, and it shows the country in relation to the continents of Asia and Africa. The map will provide you with a sense of the international setting in the video and article. This international story presents another purpose of poetry, a modern, real-world function of this specific text form: political activism and expressive freedom. Using text details from the non-fiction article and the video (don't be afraid to go back and reread!), add more "Affordances" to your T-chart. What do the Afghanistan poets say about the benefits of poetry? Why do they write poetry rather than using a different writing medium (i.e. prose)? |
Argumentative Writing Assignment
As the concluding activity for this lesson, take a stance on the ability of poetry to serve as an effective and worthwhile medium for political activism and expression. Do you think poetry is worthwhile, powerful method for political activism and commentary? (i.e. In Szbist terminology, is it one of the “miracles” of poetry?). Or do you think poetry writing for political activism is ineffective, waste of time? (i.e. going back to
the Twitter quote, is it one of the things that poetry can’t do?). Does the Kabul women's poetry matter? Does it - can it - really make a difference? Synthesizing your opinion with text details from non-fiction article and video, write a short argumentative essay (at least 2 paragraphs) that persuades the reader about whether poetry should be used for "civil resistance" purposes. Use the story of the Kabul Women's Poetry Club either to support or debunk the political power of poetry.
|
Dangerous 'truth': The Kabul women's poetry club
October, 21 2013 | Lyse Doucet
In Afghanistan, women are determined to protect new-found freedoms. For the BBC's 100 Women season, I met the women poets who face great risk, including death threats, to express their deepest thoughts.
In a little room tucked behind a Kabul cinema bedecked with Bollywood billboards, Afghan women are waging a literary war that is both personal and political.
They call poetry their sword.
"We take pure and sacred words and express our feelings with those words," explains 29-year-old Pakisa Arzoo, with an energy as bright as her striking emerald green veil.
"But I know my society has this belief that writing poetry is a sin."
A few dozen women writers meet every week to share poetry in a quiet place sealed off from the din of a bustling neighbourhood, and the pressures of a deeply conservative society.
Amil recites her poem with an emphatic cadence that captures everyone's attention. It is a story they all know well.
"The fire of war has started and is burning the country / My heart is burning in these flames, my body is burning."
The Mirman Baheer literary society brings women together to share and publish their poems, and find strength in greater numbers. It now counts a few hundred members in clubs in several Afghan cities.
"It's our form of resistance," explains one of the society's founders, Sahira Sharif, a member of parliament.
Afghan women are drawing on their own traditions to break taboos. For centuries, in a largely illiterate society, women used verse as a means of expression and escape from lives largely controlled by men, except for their deepest thoughts.
Brave risks
Women poets have gone down in history. The warrior poet Malalai - who famously fought British troops in the 1880 Battle of Maiwand - and Rabia Balkhi - one of the first poets to write in modern Persian - are the stuff of legend. Most members of the society in Kabul are educated women in professional jobs. But most still write under pen names. Some are chaperoned by male relatives who sit in neat rows of chairs on the other side of the room.
Others write in secret, their work hidden from their families. Determined and defiant, they take brave risks to belong to this special sorority, if only by telephone.
When a phone rings at the back of the room, Pakisa Arzoo rushes to take the call.
A schoolgirl is on the line with her poem from a village on the outskirts of Kabul.
Ms Arzoo carefully holds the mobile phone next to a crackling microphone so everyone can hear her tribute to her teacher.
"As I am serving today, I have become a doctor / Teacher, if I am an engineer today / It is all because of your hard work / That today I have become a soldier of this nation / I can feel all the pain and suffering you have been through…"
"When we recite our poems, we remove our pain," says Seeta Habibi, Country Director for the Afghan Women's Writing Project, a group established with the help of writers living in the United States.
"We talk to the paper with our pen and we fight for our rights on paper," she explains. "Someday we hope we will win."
Threats from the Taliban in the west of Afghanistan forced Ms Habibi, the only female journalist in her province, to leave her home.
Karima Shabrang faced a similar fate in her village in the remote northern province of Badakhshan. Local elders condemned her as a bad moral influence for her romantic laments of love and loss.
"They said I should be got rid of. They meant I should be killed," she recalls in the simple mud brick home in the poor suburbs of Kabul where she now lives with two brothers who came to her rescue.
Unspoken subjects
She recites a poem with mementoes of Badakhshan around her: a striped rug of bright colours; a quail, issuing its staccato call from its cage.
But her explicit images of intimacy seem to belong to another place.
"I miss you… my hands are stretching from the ruins of Kabul… I want to invite you to my room for a delicious smoke… and you will give me refuge in your shivering red body."
Is poetry worth a life in exile?
"I would prefer a dignified death to a life lived as a hostage in silence," is Ms Shabrang's softly voiced, strongly worded reply. Her work was recently honoured with an award by the Afghan chapter of PEN.
"It's true these topics are not acceptable in today's society but that doesn't mean what I express is not true."
'Stronger than a letter'
Truth can be hard to tell in country struggling to emerge from 30 years of war.
The walls of the Kapisa Writers and Poets Society, two hours' drive north of Kabul, are plastered with photographs of Afghan kings, presidents, and warlords.
That does not stop Dr Masouda from taking on the men with guns.
"Oh my God, all the warlords testing their weapons again and earning a lot of money out of war..." she recites from a handwritten poem.
But local commanders threatened her with dire consequences if she did not censor her published work. I ask her what they did not like about her poems.
"The truth, the truth," she insists. "They want us to ignore crimes in Afghanistan, killings and bombings."
But for all the poets' pain, they believe they are making progress.
"Last year, five women won poetry prizes and their families realised poetry could be something positive," says Dr Sharif, an MP.
"If a family member takes a step with them, even for just one hour or one day, it helps their struggle with wider society."
At the poetry club in Kabul there is a poem to Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai.
"I stand in your presence, president / Take my request. / I have come tired, restless and injured. / Your criminals made me cry."
I later ask the president if he knew about the poem.
"Yes," he replies with immediate recollection. "The poet read it to me when I visited her province."
"A poem is always stronger than a letter," says Dr Sharif.
As worries mount over their fragile gains of the past decade, women writers are now waging their own fight for their rights, including their right to write and be heard.
In a little room tucked behind a Kabul cinema bedecked with Bollywood billboards, Afghan women are waging a literary war that is both personal and political.
They call poetry their sword.
"We take pure and sacred words and express our feelings with those words," explains 29-year-old Pakisa Arzoo, with an energy as bright as her striking emerald green veil.
"But I know my society has this belief that writing poetry is a sin."
A few dozen women writers meet every week to share poetry in a quiet place sealed off from the din of a bustling neighbourhood, and the pressures of a deeply conservative society.
Amil recites her poem with an emphatic cadence that captures everyone's attention. It is a story they all know well.
"The fire of war has started and is burning the country / My heart is burning in these flames, my body is burning."
The Mirman Baheer literary society brings women together to share and publish their poems, and find strength in greater numbers. It now counts a few hundred members in clubs in several Afghan cities.
"It's our form of resistance," explains one of the society's founders, Sahira Sharif, a member of parliament.
Afghan women are drawing on their own traditions to break taboos. For centuries, in a largely illiterate society, women used verse as a means of expression and escape from lives largely controlled by men, except for their deepest thoughts.
Brave risks
Women poets have gone down in history. The warrior poet Malalai - who famously fought British troops in the 1880 Battle of Maiwand - and Rabia Balkhi - one of the first poets to write in modern Persian - are the stuff of legend. Most members of the society in Kabul are educated women in professional jobs. But most still write under pen names. Some are chaperoned by male relatives who sit in neat rows of chairs on the other side of the room.
Others write in secret, their work hidden from their families. Determined and defiant, they take brave risks to belong to this special sorority, if only by telephone.
When a phone rings at the back of the room, Pakisa Arzoo rushes to take the call.
A schoolgirl is on the line with her poem from a village on the outskirts of Kabul.
Ms Arzoo carefully holds the mobile phone next to a crackling microphone so everyone can hear her tribute to her teacher.
"As I am serving today, I have become a doctor / Teacher, if I am an engineer today / It is all because of your hard work / That today I have become a soldier of this nation / I can feel all the pain and suffering you have been through…"
"When we recite our poems, we remove our pain," says Seeta Habibi, Country Director for the Afghan Women's Writing Project, a group established with the help of writers living in the United States.
"We talk to the paper with our pen and we fight for our rights on paper," she explains. "Someday we hope we will win."
Threats from the Taliban in the west of Afghanistan forced Ms Habibi, the only female journalist in her province, to leave her home.
Karima Shabrang faced a similar fate in her village in the remote northern province of Badakhshan. Local elders condemned her as a bad moral influence for her romantic laments of love and loss.
"They said I should be got rid of. They meant I should be killed," she recalls in the simple mud brick home in the poor suburbs of Kabul where she now lives with two brothers who came to her rescue.
Unspoken subjects
She recites a poem with mementoes of Badakhshan around her: a striped rug of bright colours; a quail, issuing its staccato call from its cage.
But her explicit images of intimacy seem to belong to another place.
"I miss you… my hands are stretching from the ruins of Kabul… I want to invite you to my room for a delicious smoke… and you will give me refuge in your shivering red body."
Is poetry worth a life in exile?
"I would prefer a dignified death to a life lived as a hostage in silence," is Ms Shabrang's softly voiced, strongly worded reply. Her work was recently honoured with an award by the Afghan chapter of PEN.
"It's true these topics are not acceptable in today's society but that doesn't mean what I express is not true."
'Stronger than a letter'
Truth can be hard to tell in country struggling to emerge from 30 years of war.
The walls of the Kapisa Writers and Poets Society, two hours' drive north of Kabul, are plastered with photographs of Afghan kings, presidents, and warlords.
That does not stop Dr Masouda from taking on the men with guns.
"Oh my God, all the warlords testing their weapons again and earning a lot of money out of war..." she recites from a handwritten poem.
But local commanders threatened her with dire consequences if she did not censor her published work. I ask her what they did not like about her poems.
"The truth, the truth," she insists. "They want us to ignore crimes in Afghanistan, killings and bombings."
But for all the poets' pain, they believe they are making progress.
"Last year, five women won poetry prizes and their families realised poetry could be something positive," says Dr Sharif, an MP.
"If a family member takes a step with them, even for just one hour or one day, it helps their struggle with wider society."
At the poetry club in Kabul there is a poem to Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai.
"I stand in your presence, president / Take my request. / I have come tired, restless and injured. / Your criminals made me cry."
I later ask the president if he knew about the poem.
"Yes," he replies with immediate recollection. "The poet read it to me when I visited her province."
"A poem is always stronger than a letter," says Dr Sharif.
As worries mount over their fragile gains of the past decade, women writers are now waging their own fight for their rights, including their right to write and be heard.