Songs of Freedom

Azita GhahremanAzita is a writer and poet, born in Mashhad, Iran. She has published six collections of poetry in Farsi, and three collections and two stories in Swedish. Her first poetry book, Eve's Songs, was published in 1990. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including German, French, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Spanish and Italian. A collection of her poetry, Negative of a Group Photograph (Bloodaxe Books 2018), won an English Pen award, and a selection of her poems in Russian and Ukrainian was awarded the "Little Ludwig Noble Prize" in 2014 by the Udmurtia Russian Academy. Azita's work has been reviewed in the literary world. On several occasions, she has been a judge for the young poets' contest at the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation. Her last collection of stories, Somewhere to Get Lost, was published in Sweden in 2022.Azita's poem in this book is translated from Farsi by Rouhi Shafii.Ava HomaAva Homa is an acclaimed author, speaker, and faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her debut novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire (HarperCollins & Abrams, 2020), was named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal (US), the Independent (UK), and Globe and Mail (Canada). It was featured in Roxane Gay's Book Club, won the 2020 Nautilus Silver Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2022 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her short story collection, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the 2011 Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize. Ava holds a master's degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and her essays and fiction have been published and anthologized in the UK, US, and Canada. She has delivered speeches across Europe and North America, including at the United Nations in Geneva.Ziba KarbassiZiba Karbasi was born in Tabriz, north-western Iran, and has lived in the UK since her teenage years. Her first book in Farsi was published in her early twenties. Since then, she has published twelve poetry collections in both Farsi and other languages. These include her trilingual book, Ooooooommm (Mille Gru, 2011) and Collage Poems (Exiled Writers Ink, 2009). Her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. She is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of her generation living in exile. She is known for her dense, revolutionary and lyric poetry, and has performed her poems widely across Europe and America. In 1997, she introduced a subject to poetry known as Breath Poetry. In 2009, she won the Golden Apple Poetry Price in Azerbaijan. In 2012, she was chosen by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC), Birkbeck, University of London, as a writer whose language epitomises the revolutionary power of poetry when faced by the crises of our lives in the contemporary world. Ziba was chairperson of the Iranian Writers Association (in exile) from 2002 to 2004, and chair of Exiled Writers Ink in the UK from 2012 to 2014. She has served as a director of PEN international relations (Iran in exile) from 2019 to the beginning of 2021.Ziba's peoms in this book are translated from Farsi by Nazlee Radboy.Soheila MirzaeiSoheila Mirzaei was boran in Urmia in north-east Iran. She spent her childhood in Azerbaijan before migrating with her family to Tehran. She has been passionate about literature and writing poetry since her teenage years. In the 1970s, she participated in poetry and storytelling workshops led by the acclaimed Iranian novelist, poet and critic, Reza Baraheni. Soheila's first book was published during this period, coinciding with her migration to Germany. Her books include I slip From My Hands, (Aida Publications, Germany, 2013); Diaspora of Poetry, an anthology of poetry by modern Iranian women (Aftab Publications, Norway, 2021); Elmiden Doshurum, a bilingual poetry collection in Farsi and Azeri; Michka Sings Illegally (Mortazavi Publications, Germany, 2005); and I Remain with a Sin (Hamgam Publications, Tehran, Iran, 1998).Soheila's peoms in this book are translated from Farsi by Rouhi Shafii.Sana NassariBorn in 1985, Sana Nassari is a young award-winning Iranian writer, poet, and literary translator, based in London. To date she has published one novel of her own, and translated four novels by the American multi-award-wining writer Karen Joy Fowler, and a novel by the late Polish writer Marek Hlasko, into Farsi. A chapbook of Sana's short stories, These Two Roses, has been published by Exiled Writers Ink (London, 2020). Her debut poetry collection, Departure, has been published by the reputable publishing house Morvarid in Iran. Also, her poetry collection, Oh Delilah, was due to be published by Morvarid, but was banned by the country's censor authorities. This collection won the second prize for unpublished collections from the Journalists' Poetry Award. Sana has recently obtained an MA in History of Art at SOAS, University of London. Currently, she writes reviews and essays for the Writers Mosaic magazine.Nasrin ParvazNasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and spent eight years in prison. Her books include One Woman's Struggles in Iran: a prison memoir (award-winner in the Women's Issues category of 2019 International Book Awards), and The Secret Letters from X to A (Victorina Press, 2018). Her prison memoir has also been published in Spanish and German. Her new novel, Coffee, was longlisted for Bath Novel Award 2023. Some of Nasrin's short stories and poems have been published in various anthologies. She has also translated poems into English and published a novel in Farsi about the massacre of prisoners in 1988 in Iran, to which she was an eyewitness. Nasrin has written articles in national newspapers. She is a regular participant in discussion panels and has been frequently interviewed about the situation in Iran on national radio and TV. Her paintings have been in various exhibitions, and on postcards and calendars. Nasrin studied for a degree in psychology and subsequently gained an MA in International Relations. She then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Systemic Theory at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she worked in a team of family therapists for some time.Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah)Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah) is a poet, literary critic, translator and editor of Vajeh (Word), a Persian cultural and literary magazine. Born in Khoram-Abad, in south-east Iran, she started writing poetry when she was nine and had her first ghazal published in a prestigious literary magazine when she was thirteen. Her first book of poetry, Spark Dies At Once (Jaragheh Zood Mimirad) was published in Iran in 1992, followed by her second collection And Then the Sun (Va Sepass Aftaab) in the UK, then Birds are Out of Date (Parandeh Digar, Na), published in Germany. Her fourth book, The Planet of Pause (Sayaareh Ye Derang) was published in April 2012. Her critically acclaimed work has been translated into English, French, German, Polish, Italian and other languages. Mehrangiz's first pamphlet in English, The Planet of Immortals, was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021. At an international poetry festival in France, she was given the title 'The Dawn of Literature' in the culture section of Le Temps.Some of Mehrangiz's poems in this book are translated from Farsi by the poet herself and edited by Catherine Davidson. Some are translated by Robert Chandler.Shirin RazavianShirin Razavian is a Tehran-born British poet whose work has appeared in Poetry London, Index on Censorship, The London Magazine, Agenda and Persian Book Review, among others. She has published six Farsi and English poetry collections in the UK, the latest of which is Birds of Darkness. Shirin is a member of the poetry magazine World Cultural Heritage Voices, and on the editorial committee of Exiled Ink Magazine. She was also a judge for the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation Poetry Prize. Some of her poems have been translated into Czech, in the anthology Before Infinity Ends. In 2015, Shirin was selected to represent Iran in the Happiness-the Delight Tree, an anthology published by the UN Society of Writers. Her work has also been featured in several other anthologies, including The Poetry of Iranian Women (US); The Silver Throat of the Moon (UK); Resistance, Voices of Exiled Writers; Avay e Tabeed; and Diasporic Poetry. Shirin has been a committee member of Iranian PEN in Exile, and Iranian Writers Association in Exile for four years. In 2023, she was chosen by Art on The Underground to collaborate with London artist Barby Asante in a project called Declaration of Independence, and received two Make a Difference awards for promoting diversity and inclusion.Muzhgan Saghar SchaffaMuzhgan Saghar Schaffa was born in 1977 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her father was in the army, and her mother was from the first generation of women's rights activists. She finished high school in Kabul, then following the Taliban's first round of invasion of Afghanistan, she emigrated to Germany. After learning German, she studied pedagogy, and now works with children. Her first collection of poetry, Colourless Apples, was published in Kabul in 2014, followed by two other collections, The Sun Rains and Unsettled Ocean, published in Herat in 2020.Muzhgan's poems in this book are part of her collection of poetry, translated from Farsi into English by Rouhi Shafii.Rouhi ShafiiRouhi Shafii is a sociologist, writer, translator of Persian poetry, and women's rights activist. She has published six books, both in Farsi and English. Among her acclaimed translations into Farsi are Women of Vietnam and Argentina, National Resistance and Peron's Dictatorship. Her memoir, Scent of Saffron (1997) was widely welcomed as one of the first memoirs in English by an Iranian woman after the revolution. Her historical novel, Pomegranate Hearts (2006) was a kaleidoscope of fiction within the history of contemporary Iran. She has published reviews on the memoirs of a number of political prisoners in both Farsi and English. She has translated two books of Persian poetry into English, Migrating Birds and The Anthems of Love, both published by the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation. Her latest book, Gates to the Great Civilization in Farsi was published in 2023. Rouhi is a member of the Executive Committee of Exiled Writers Ink, and the editorial board of Exiled Ink Magazine. Her first collection of poetry in English will soon be published.

"This anthology features ten remarkable award-winning female poets who have fled regimes hostile to their lives and voices, and found refuge and freedom in democracies across the world - a diaspora of courageous women from Iran and Afghanistan unveiled through the power of the written word. Some poems speak of love, female desire, escape, childhood and the role of women, others of longings for lost family and home, personal trauma, estrangement, atrocity, war, torture, stoning and imprisonment, yet all stand as a testament to a struggle for creative survival; a right to self-expression. Their courage and defiance illuminating our understanding of what it means to find yourself 'always caught in a place between what is now and your imagination,' as poet Rouhi Shafii so eloquently puts it. 'Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget,' wrote Ovid, exiled from his beloved Rome. These talented poets, also exiled from the sweetness of their native soil, find powerful voice in this moving and enlightened collection, deepening our appreciation of the freedoms we enjoy." -Chrys Salt, MBE, poet, author of Skookum Jim and The Klondike Gold Rush“These poems by Afghan and Iranian women writers in exile are a poignant and moving record of recent persecution and subjection. What is most striking about the anthology as a whole is that these women seem to share a language of resistance that braids lyric voice and reverie to the hard facts of lived experience. Remarkably, however, the lyricism never softens the impact of the physical and mental violence at their core but rather accords it a resonance, a dreamlike quality that carries it deep into the hearts of listeners and readers alike. Through the powerful deployment of clearly original voices — ably conveyed by the translators into English — this anthology will give anyone contemplating the embattled situations of women in Afghanistan and Iran a sense of hope. These are voices that sing while they reprimand, lament and upbraid.” –David Kinloch, poet, author of In Search of Dustie-Fute"Songs of Freedom is an important and powerful anthology that connects the personal and the political in the profound lyrical insights of the ten exiled women poets from Iran and Afghanistan into the immense struggles faced by women in their countries of origin. Crucially, exile enables the poets to erupt to speak out in their resistance to clerical rule in their former countries with its control of women's bodies and destinies, its frequent violence and its human rights abuses. Yet, the immersive poems also explore the nuances of the true self revealing past loves and a deep attachment for the countries in which the poets lived and from which they fled. Living in exile is rarely mentioned but Razavian's poem 'New Year' is interesting as despite 'Life as grey and cool as the London sky' she is 'eternally grateful for serenity' given the trauma experienced in Iran. The poems expressing trauma were surely challenging to create but the imagery used is unusual and imaginative. The prevalence of the representation of suffering and killing, with its motifs of blood, stoning, corpses and graves, is striking and inevitably many of the poems are permeated by sadness, weeping, mourning and longing. Importantly, through this innovative anthology the impassioned voices of the gifted women poets will be widely heard as they sing their songs of freedom." -Dr Jennifer Langer, poet and Exiled Writers Ink founding director, author of The Search"Songs of Freedom is a timely, resonant and impassioned literary engagement with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Contributions from a range of writers - novelists, poets, translators, critics - from the Iranian diaspora and beyond help us to understand how this revolutionary resistance movement is resonating around the world. Shahrzad Mojab's trenchant introductory essay - giving a political, historical and social context to the events - also points out that above all the uprising has been a powerful, emotional earthquake whose aftershocks still tremble around the world. Leading writers respond here through poetry - as witnesses, empathetic observers, story-tellers, using the power of their language to bring us close to the moment and explore its many dimensions. The contributions range from Azita Ghahreman's epic, mythological story of maternal loss transformed into the erasure of a generation of "unknown girls" to Nasrin Parvaz's condensed narratives of violence and comradeship and novelist Ava Homan's exploration of love and death through the eyes of exile. Many of the poems have been ably translated by Rouhi Shafii, who has curated the collection along with Shirin Razavian. This work reminds us that while autocratic regimes around the world seek to divide and isolate us, through imagination we can stand united in solidarity and hope." -Catherine Temma Davidson, novelist and poet, author of The Orchard"The wrenching death of Mahsa Amini and other women for confronting morality police with a lock of hair running free, or an unintentional baring of their heads, has provoked a gentle revolution, now commemorated in a powerful anthology on Woman, Life, Freedom, authored by ten poets of the Afghan-Iranian diaspora. All of the poets in this book exemplify different perspectives from their own experiences of censorship or abuse merely for being women. One poet in particular, Ziba Karbassi, is one whose work I have appreciated in different contexts, but who shines in this anthology as an indomitable spirit with a gift for expression in metaphors of small personal moments: biting off of the brand of imperialism on a tennis shoe, leaving blood; insisting to live in love, that she is not the kind of mother to let the stairway surpass her child. Ziba's poetry will always surmount the staircases of discrimination and arrogance created by a society still struggling to accept the strength and indomitable spirit of its women." -Karen Melander Magoon, poet and opera singer, author of I Love Wine and other songs"This electrifying collection offers us crafted, lyrical, and daring voices that ache, soar, arouse, beckon, and inspire - voices that must be heard. The poetry of radical grief, radical resistance, radical Beauty amidst ruin, is a tradition that speaks to the POWER of poetry to both mourn and uplift, to question and connect, to stay rooted in both our truth and the heart-slaying metaphors of our place and our history - and gifts us an opportunity to share and honour the heart and soul of a people. The poets included in Songs of Freedom are brilliant, extraordinary. These poems bear profound witness, are a wakeup call, a cri de coeur, a whisper, a shout, an anguished howl, a summons. They reach back to the ancient underpinnings of all poetry, all over the world, and remind us that the origin - and destiny - of poetry has always, and ever, been incantatory and necessary." -Judyth Hill, poet, Chair of PEN International Women Writers Committee, author of Hardwired For Love"Songs Of Freedom is an important book, an anthology of poetry by ten Iranian and Afghan women poets writing in the face of violent repression and forced exile. Every page resonates with anger and love, with the sense that love will win out in the end, with the justified craving for natural freedoms and the huge struggles against institutional social and personal violence. That this is a book of women's voices matters the most and it is vital for us to hear what is being said: yes, ten different voices across the individual poets, but more overwhelmingly, their shared voice of absolute tenacity and the courage of their lyric struggle. Many thanks to the editors, Rouhi Shafii and Shirin Razavian, to the publisher Afsana Press and above all to the ten poets who are giving us their work, mostly translated from Farsi, so that we can hear them now in English and thus better understand how and why their freedom songs are so important and matter so much." -Stephen Watts, poet and translator, author of Republic of Dogs/Republic of Birds"From the perspective of my 'safe European home', it is not the situation these poets have to constantly deal with that impresses me - anyone and everyone has a duty to be utterly empathetic with them for that. It's more that under such oppression, these poets, these women, manage to maintain the integrity of their line, their wit, their dissent and their aesthetic trajectory, soaked as these are in 'exilic consciousness': Azita Ghahreman- 'do not forget the cypresses in the garden, and keep the words warm in your chest' or Ava Homa- 'your exposed hair is a plot of Imperialists; comrades accused' or Ziba Karbassi- 'I have bitten off the star on your sport's shoes with my canine teeth' or MehrangizRassapour (M. Pegah)- 'I'm astonished at this perfume, sparkling itself onto corpses'. The power and freedom they win back, inspire, dream of, possess or fight for, are inside these lines, in marrow of the poems themselves." -Matthew Caley, poet, author of To Abandon Wizardry"Songs of Freedom, an anthology written by Iranian and Afghan women poets, is both a literary work and a song of protest. As the PEN Women's Manifesto states: 'Across the globe, culture, religion and tradition are repeatedly valued above human rights and are used as arguments to encourage or defend harm against women and girls. PEN believes that the act of silencing a person is to deny their existence. It is a kind of death. Humanity is both wanting and bereft without the full and free expression of women's creativity and knowledge.' I celebrate these pages that honour the intelligence, individuality and creativity of Iranian and Afghan poets who also speak for their silenced sisters." -Jennifer Clement, poet, novelist and President Emerita of PEN International, author of Prayers for the Stolen"Songs of Freedom is an important book representing the voices of exiled Iranian and Afghan women poets. As such it is a seminal work and a reminder of the need to speak out through poetry with precision on what matters most in our world. This anthology, appearing at a time of division and uncertainty, is a gift to poetry and our international poetry culture. The women here have found their voices and generously use them in positive and life affirming ways for a better world. There is so much to praise and admire." -David Caddy, poet, critic and literary sociologist, author of Interiors, and Other Poems"In this collection Afghan and Irani women are centred. Their essential truths, their voices have been sought and collated. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement has been the most incredible women-led show of resistance in our lifetimes, and long may we remember. We cannot forget. Here in this anthology, we have some of the songs of freedom of brave, resisting souls. Through their work, we become better allies. Their pain becomes ours. Their suffering is our suffering. We cannot forget. No, we must not forget: Liberty does not come free to all. For many, many Afghani and Irani women, it has cost them their lives and continues to. Let us then celebrate in this moment, at this time the ten voices we have in our hands who have lived to tell the tale." -Sascha Aurora Akhtar, thinker, writer and educator, author of The Whimsy of Dank Ju-Ju"This is a very powerful anthology, the voices of the ten poets, so different from each other, explore the past and present, the seen and unseen, capturing the immense personal grief and collective struggle in Iran and Afghanistan over the last four decades. It is immensely hard to summarise what is contained in the anthology, the poems are powerful and unforgettable. Nasrin Parvaz's short poem The Invader is one such: The Invader/ Her small pretty face framed with black hair/ shines like a gem on the shore/ her fear glazed eyes are open/ her parted lips dead blue./ The clear blue waters of the Mediterranean/ wash the little invader." -Janet Sutherland, poet, author of Home Farm"The poems in Songs of Freedom are a deep and moving poetic education for any reader. These works, by leading women poets from Iran and Afghanistan are parables of survival, frequently honouring those who were less fortunate, who did not survive, they poignantly bear witness. In such a poetics, 'the words of the poem [are] a cry in the throat', voiced, recorded as testimony, by Shirin Razavian, but also existing of their own artistic merit. At times direct as transmission, but also linguistically playful, these powerful voices lift from the page, inhabiting the world at large as part of a continual struggle, a poetic resistance to centuries of male-dominated oppression." -James Byrne, poet, editor and translator, author of Places You Leave"This ground-breaking anthology is a document of humanity finding its voice in the harshest circumstance - when not only humanity, but also its gender is persecuted, abused, tortured, and crushed. In the same time, it proves once again how right was Paul Celan to assert that poetry is the proof that human beings can be tortured and even killed - but they can never be destroyed. Language remains and it bears witness. Like other seminal anthologies documenting historic and individual traumas (I am thinking first of all to the one edited by Carolyn Forche in 1993, Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness, or to Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar in 2008), this anthology collecting the voices of 10 Iranian and Afghan women poets is another memorable proof of this axiom: barbarity will never have the final word. Our entire humanity rests on such proofs. And on such anthologies." -Radu Vancu, poet and novelist, President of PEN Romania, author of Transparenta"This wonderful anthology of deeply moving poems by brave women, forged in the white heat of oppression and exile, speaks to the power of poetry to inspire and transform pain into liberation. Songs of Freedom embodies the suffering and dreams of the women of Iran, Afghanistan and the world in precise words and scorching harmonies that rise up against power-hungry politicians and clerics who are offended by the laughter of children and the glow of the full moon at midnight, who would cover up their crimes against the freedom of women, attack the spirit of life and suppress love and sensuality under the disguise of religion. These inspiring and painful poems transform cruelty and suffering into revelatory visions that lift our spirits and open doors to love, understanding and liberation. This anthology is a celebration of life, love, and truth by pointing to the path of liberation through universal beauty." -John Curl, writer and poet, author of Revolutionary Alchemy"The subjugated condition of women in Iran and Afghanistan is well known. In order to speak or write, many women have moved abroad. But emigration in such circumstances is not easy. This anthology of ten prominent women writers living in exile carries their experience, some through translation, into ours. There are marvellous poets here. Nasrin Parvaz, who has known prison and torture, writes how while phoning a friend and laughing '... I saw you in the back of a car // with two hard looking men. / Your right arm was in a sling.' 'Go to my shadow's house / Your knock / Will light up my shadow!' writes Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah). The book is full of absence and desire. It will haunt you." -George Szirtes, poet and translator, author of The Photographer at Sixteen