May - title song poetry challenge world music

25 May - world music

May is dedicated to song title poetry. In between I post poems, podcast and articles. The theme today is world music, the letters to resume tomorrow. For today, let’s share a song title poem with songs in other languages from other countries. You are free to use one artist or a mix of artists. As always, share who the artists are at the end of your piece.

Thank you for treating this space with grace, love and music. This space is free and gives you the opportunity to share your song title poems. The daily challenge runs for the month of May and then we do this monthly until next May. There are more free events. Thank you for those of you who have upgraded to a paid subscription. For £50/year you get this publication going so you can keep enjoying free events like this one. This also gives you access to the archive of almost 600 poems, reviews, short stories, writing prompts and support, culture, news and writing advice plus the podcast Writer Pilgrim Sounds. A heartfelt thank you to those who have upgraded and keep the free events going for everyone.

Nour el Ain

Habibi/Nour el Ain
Djadja
Leiley
Dynata Dynata
Rush

Jerusalema
ABCD
Con la misma moneda
Hely meli
Den mas syghoro

Tsigaro ateleioto
L'Histoire
30 40 (Yes I do)
Cumbia Pa'oriente
Baddala Aleyk

Toda menina Bahiana
San trellos se agapao
Oti agapo einai diko sou
Rosa Branca
Petit Pays

Songs sung Amr Diab, Aya Nakamura, Dania, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Ayra Starr, Master KG, Henri Madoré, Gerardo Morán, Hamid el Shaeri, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Sokratis Malamas, Cheb Tarik, Melisses, Lizandro Meza, Nancy Ajram, Gilberto Gil, Nikos Vertis, Glykeria, Mariza, Cesaria Evora.

We write poems with the help of our favourite artists using their song titles only. My understanding is we can use song titles, don’t change them in anyway and don’t talk badly about the band/song if you wish to stay out of trouble.

Each day in May will have a letter assigned. So, in alphabetical order, we started with a band or singer with A and now our theme for today is world music.

This song title poetry festival started at the back of NaPoWriMo (national poetry writing month) last year. There was a prompt with the word Cardigan. It appeared in a song by a famous singer songwriter. I took the word and instead remembered The Cardigans, fronted by the lovely Nina Persson.

Photo by Sašo Tušar on Unsplash

I took a bunch of their song titles and wrote a poem starting with the song that came to my mind first. You can read that song title poem and some of the comments here on my publication.

It isn’t a copyright issue as the lines are all quotes from song titles and you cannot copyright those. However, some titles may be extremely unique and other countries may have trademark laws that restrict use. We are celebrating music and our love for the artists and these songs. Don’t use the titles without letting us know who the artists are and one way to do this is by adding a short sentence at the bottom of your song title poem.

One artist by letter. So if it’s A, only use Abba, or Aerosmith or Anastasia, don’t mix artists. (For mixing artists and all that join us on First Friday of the month June to April). You can post more than one poem if you feel you want to do two poems about two different artists. Stay for the whole of May or pop in as and when you can.

My Favourite Game 

Erase and Rewind
My Favourite Game
In the round
A Lovefool
Hold me
For what it’s worth

And then you kissed me
After all
Losers. Been it.
Your new cuckoo
Communication
For what it's worth

This “poem” consists of titles from The Cardigans. 

Your reward is the community in here and making new friends and getting readers to your own stack eventually. I hear some friendships have grown out of the May festival of last year.

Rules: Be kind! Read others’ song title poems and comment. You can use the same title over again and you can write stanzas, sonnets you name it. Title can be the artist name or a song title. The archive is open for all previous song title posts from May onwards.

Please note that some of the emails will come to your inbox and others will be posted to web only as it can add a sense of overwhelm to get 31 song title poems in your inbox.

You’re invited to join and if you can become a paid subscriber to support this publication.