The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles

About the Poets and Translators

153 About the Poets and Translators Pegah Ahmadi was born in Tehran. She began writing poetry at the age of seven. At seventeen she made her début as a poet by the publication of a poem in the literary magazine Takāpu. Since then she has regularly contributed to literary magazines inside Iran. She is the author of four books of poetry. Ahmad Reza Ahmadi was born in 1940 in Kerman, Iran. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry. Maryam Ala Amjadi is an Iranian poet and translator. She is the author of two collections of poems, Me, I and Myself (2003) and Gypsy Bullets (2010). She was awarded a silver medal in the 14th National Persian Literary Olympiad (2001), and an honorary fellowship in creative writing at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa (2008). Her literary translations include a selection of Raymond Carver’s poetry, Fear of Arriving Early, which she translated from English into Persian (2009). She currently lives in Pune, India. Ali Alizadeh was born in Iran in 1976 and migrated to Australia at fourteen. He began writing in English in his late teens and received his PhD in professional writing from Deakin University, Melbourne. His books include the collection of poetry Eyes in Times of War (2006) and the novel The New Angel (2008). His latest book is a work of creative nonfiction titled Iran: My Grandfather (2010). The poem “Marco Polo,” included in this anthology, is from Alizadeh’s forthcoming collection of poetry Ashes in the Air (2011). Amin Banani is professor emeritus of history and Persian literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Mysticism 154 and Poetry in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (1987) and Persian Literature (1988). Reza Baraheni was born in Tabriz, Iran, in 1935. He is a poet, literary translator, critique, and novelist who spent time in prison for his writings during the Shah’s regime and later, in the early years of the Islamic Republic’s government. He is the author of more than fifty books in both Persian and English, and his works have been translated into dozens of languages. The poems in this book first appeared in translation in God’s Shadow: Prison Poems (1976). Coleman Barks was born in 1937 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since 1977 he has collaborated with various scholars of the Persian language (most notably, John Moyne) to bring to American free verse the poetry of the thirteenth-century mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi. This work has resulted in twenty-one volumes (including the bestselling Essential Rumi in 1995), two appearances on Bill Moyers’ PBS specials, and inclusion in the prestigious Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. The Rumi translations have sold more than a million copies. Kaveh Bassiri is the cofounder of Triptych Readings, which presents established and emerging poets, and the literary arts director of Persian Arts Festival, which runs a monthly poetry reading at Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. He is the recipient of the 2010 Witter Bynner Poetry Translation Residency. His writing won the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award and was recently published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Drunken Boat, Free Verse, Harpur Palate, and Mississippi Review in which his poem “Memorial Day” (2010) was first published. Simin Behbahani is a distinguished voice in Iranian literature. She is the author of numerous books of poetry and essays. Her work has attracted the attention and admiration of an ever-growing readership inside and outside Iran. Her poems in this collection first appeared in A Cup Of Sin: Selected Poems (1999). Mohsen Emadi was born in Sari, Iran, in 1976. He is the author of a 155 collection of poetry, The Flower of the Lines, translated into Spanish and published in Spain. He is the founder and manager of Ahmad Shamlou’s official website and the House of World Poets website, a Persian anthology of world poetry that includes the works of more than 100 modern poets. Shideh Etaat is a graduate student in the professional writing program at the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles. Forugh Farrokhzad was born in 1935 in Tehran, Iran. Her poetry was the poetry of protest—protest through revelation— of the innermost world of women (a taboo subject until then), their intimate secrets and desires, their sorrows, longings, aspirations, and at times even their articulation through silence. On February 14, 1967 she died in a car crash. She was 32 years old. All...