A Fusion of Two Minds in an Innovative Genre of Poetry
Avril Meallem (Israel) & Shernaz Wadia (India)
Shernaz
Welcome to our website dedicated to "Tapestry Poetry" a form of collaborative poetry writing that we developed via email.
We became acquainted with each other's poetry on the ‘Your Space’ section of the 'Muse India' literary e-journal.
We met in Mumbai, India in February 2010 and decided to work together on a style of collaborative poetry writing whereby each writer composes a nine line poem on a title chosen by one of them. Then the two poems are just interlaced, line by line, with minimal editing (Avril had once worked with this form in Israel).
After a few tries at this via email, we decided to form our own rules which allowed us far greater editing and mixing of lines and called it 'Tapestry Poetry' as we felt that we were weaving the lines of our two distinct poems into one flowing 18 line poem that could stand on its own, with its own theme which did not necessarily need to follow the themes of either of the individual poems..
Together we embarked on what has turned out to be a highly challenging and exciting poetic journey resulting in this collection of poems.
Following is a summary of how 'Tapestry Poetry' works , links to an interview, four book reviews and some sample poems.
We hope you will enjoy this form as much as we have in developing and working with it and will find a partner to try it out for yourselves. We would love to hear if you have any comments to offer and also if you would like some help in working with this genre.
We have created a page to showcase 'Tapestry Poems' composed by other poets so please do email us your compositions which will be moderated before posting in the section 'Your Tapestry Poems' [email protected]
We are so excited to share with you our second collection of "Tapestry Poetry"
Available as paperback and Kindle e-book from : https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tapestry+poetry+avril+and+shernaz&ref=nb_sb_noss
and other worldwide Amazon websites including India and on-line bookstores.
In India also from https://evincepub.com/
In Israel the paperback version is also available directly from Avril : [email protected]
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In Israel the paperback version is availble directly from Avril : [email protected]
Also available from all Amazon websites in paper back and e-book format
We were honoured to be featured in the "Author's Lounge" of the Rate My Literature Literary web magazine at the following web address:
Please click here to read the interview with Dr Charanjeet Kaur of 'Muse India literary e-journal'
Please click here to read 4 reviews on our book
How 'Tapestry Poetry' Works
Each poet composes a poem on a title chosen by one of them. The poems are then exchanged and have to be woven into one seamless, flowing piece that can stand on its own. Being a collaborative effort the editing becomes a to and fro process until both writers are satisfied with the resulting 'Tapestry'.
The basic rules that we decided upon are:
- Each individual poem has to be of 9 lines.
- Only the person who gives the title has the option of actually using it in the poem. This is to avoid repetition.
- The majority of words of the original poems should be kept but grammatical changes allowed. e.g. singular to plural, verb tenses etc.
- Adjectives and adverbs can be replaced with others more befitting the Tapestry but retaining the original flavour.
- All 9 lines of each poem are to be used in the Tapestry, which effectively makes it an 18 line poem.
DANCING DAWN - May 2014