Songs of Freedom

"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 Mehrangiz

Rassapour (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 gl