Songs of Freedom

In this anthology, ten women poets from Iran and Afghanistan share their ideas, emotions, desires and worldviews with lovers of poetry, in celebration of life and freedom. The book is an ode to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, and in memory of Jina Mahsa Amini – a Kurdish young woman who died in custody as result of brutal treatment by the Iranian regime’s ‘morality police’ in September 2022. Featuring poems by: Azita Ghahraman; Ava Homa; Ziba Karbassi; Soheila Mirzaei; Sana Nassari; Nasrin Parvaz; Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah); Shirin Razavian; Muzhgan Saghar Schaffa; and Rouhi Shafii. With an introduction about the events and the role of literature in resistance movements by Shahrzad Mojab, professor of Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto.

Endorsements: 

“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“In this exquisite, important anthology of poetry by Afghan and Iranian women, Songs of Freedom, Shirin Razavian and Rouhi Shafii have created a body of work of heart-piercing beauty and power.
In Iran and Afghanistan, poetry has anciently been the voice of the people and the voice of resistance; 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 honor 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. 
In her poem, “My Mother’s Eyes,” Azita Ghahreman, a writer and poet, born in Mashhad, Iran, speaking of her aunt, writes:

 

In the year of turmoil, she was quietly killed,
in a mansion with high walls.
But she bequeathed:
“Do not forget the cypresses in the garden,
and keep the words warm in your chest.”

Do not forget... an invitation we cannot refuse, and later, to seal us into the profound paradox of the brokenhearted, she adds, 

 

But poetry is a set of nested mirrors, 
letters of cracked corners, 
which become loud sobs with no owner.

Born in Tabriz, north-western Iran, poet Ziba Karbasi, in her poem, “For Sepideh Gholian” (the Kurdish word for dawn), reminds us of the subversive superpower of poetry to slip out from locked walls...to widen the cracks in our listening:

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Let the bars of prison whisper in each other’s ear
showing off their iron biceps
with smug gestures
we hide our tears
behind laughter
Your name passes
through the keyhole.

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And, o, the wild lash of craft in the work of Soheila Mirzaei, born in Urmia in north-east Iran! In “I Dance Fire,” the poet seduces us, tosses us from line to fiery line:

I dance fire, my face with my hair, my hair, my hair
From her hair to throat 
The street dances the pine tree

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The street filled with raw dreams,
Bunches, bunches streets,
I became blood, red as a fish

And in her fierce poem, “The Wall,” she turns the tables on the aggressor, as we must:

 

Push the city walls, push them. Push them.
Blows upon my head. I have become love.
Some beloved guests behind the door,
Fluid letters in the air.
My love games ignite flames from the winter's fire

The poems in Songs of Freedom 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. 
The poem historically acknowledged as the first ever written, was by a woman in Sumeria in praise of the moon goddess Inanna, and where is this? Where is Sumeria? In Southern Iran! 
In this vital, passionate volume, we see the modern and post-modern blossoming of an ancient tradition of voices that cross worlds!
The work in Song of Freedom explodes off the page—these are poems on fire, brought together because of the death—at the hands of Iran’s Morality police—of Jîna Mahsa Amin, the 22-year-old Kurdish woman whose death is the spark that kindled the slow burn of revolution in Iran into a bonfire. 
After Jîna Mahsa Amini was arrested for showing a few strands of hair on September 19, Iran was rocked by an incendiary uprising—in the face of mortal danger—led by young people, ethnic minorities, and women. And Jîna was all three of these.
Her name, Jîna—the name that her heartbroken mother cried out over and over at her funeral— is essential to this story. Like many Kurds, Jîna had two names, an authentic one that connected her to her suppressed heritage, and an assimilated one that was meant to protect her. At Jîna’s funeral in Saqez, Kurdistan Province, the slogan which is the heart and heat of the Iran uprising, Woman, Life, Freedom, was chanted; a refrain that now echoes around the world – calling for an END to gender, ethnic, economic and pollical oppression in Iran.
Woman, Life, Freedom is a Kurdish slogan, Jin, Jyan, Azadi. Linguistically, the word Jîna shares the same roots as the words for woman, Jin, and life, Jiyan. Jîna means a giver of life, and Jîna, whose hair was judged by the authorities to be improperly covered by the compulsory hijab has brought a movement to LIFE. 
Her grave is inscribed with the words: “Dearest Jîna, you shall not die, your name will be a symbol.”
In Iran and Afghanistan, poets have the ear and the heart of the people, making them dangerous to any authoritarian regime. This is a literary tradition we have seen in Spain with Garcia Lorca and Hungarian-born Arthur Koestler, in Russia, with many many poets, including Anna Akhmatova, and recently, in the current coup in Myanmar, the generals have imprisoned more than 30 poets and at least four have been killed.
Among these many jewels of Songs of Freedom are the words of Ava Homa, acclaimed author, speaker, and faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. Taking Jîna’s story and the crisis of women’s freedom head-on in her poem, “Liberté, Égalité, Sororité,” Homa calls us to sharp attention:

 

Shrouded and disappearing, I sang
a song
fingers gripping the bars,
curls drenched in sweat and disguised.
Yet they demonized my voice,
criminalized my every word.
Virtuous girls are inconspicuous, they howled.

 

Pressed against a lonely wall,
I caught a woman’s lullabies,
muffled, I hummed along

 

Pressed against a lonely wall,
I caught a woman’s lullabies,
muffled, I hummed along
mourning our alienation,
grieving beauties vilified
wanting liberty, wanting life.

 

Slowly a chorus joined in.
Crescendoing, our voices shattered stalls. 
Storming outside, we set our veils ablaze 
twirling around flames that
devoured headscarves and our frights.

 

Boots marched in and handcuffed us
our vocal cords
twitching
as coerced confessions were televised.

 

Still, we rose,
heads held high,
hair floating in the wind,

 

passing on the torch of Kurdish defiance 
chanting Jin-Jiyan-Azadi
the Woman-Life-Freedom slogan 
transcending the fallen,
raising the torch that shall illuminate
the tunnel out of which we crawl.

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What is it to be the magnificent, impassioned voice of resistance in your country? Read this vital, powerhouse anthology, and you will know well the answer to that question!” –Judyth Hill, poet, Chair of PEN International Women Writers Committee, author of Hardwired For Love

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