Ghazals are welcomed for a special challenge issue of The Ghazal Page (ed. Gene Doty) (www.ghazalpage.net) on the theme WATER. Guest editor for this issue is Wellington poet Mary Cresswell; 15 April – 31 May 2013 submission dates. Please use the journal’s contact link (see below).

Mary says:

Look for inspiration from water, wherever it is, whatever it’s doing and who/what it’s doing it to – storms, glaciers, ships and steam engines, boiling into an undersea trench, springing from desert rock, falling as snow. Big surf. Tears. Dark streaks down the sides of subway tunnels. If water could speak we might know why it’s always moving… Perhaps use water-words as a radif – perhaps tercet (rather than couplet) ghazals – consider Arabic as well as Persian forms. Ghazals can be unpublished or published (give details of previous publication as well as permission for use).

To prime your skill with the ghazal form, check through the excellent collection of essays and articles on the The Ghazal Page website. Also see Carol Rumens’ Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/mar/17/aglutofghazals, introducing ghazals by Mimi Khalvati. To see how the form can vary, read Natasha Trethewey’s ‘Miscegenation’ (http://www.cstone.net/~poems/miscetre.htm ) and Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mother Mourns’ (http://www.daypoems.net/plainpoems/1017.html ).

Please submit (http://www.ghazalpage.net/ information/submitting.html) between 15 April and 31 May 2013, and follow the journal submission instructions. Subject line: “Water issue”.