Negative of a Group Photograph: نگاتیو یک عکس دسته جمعی

By Azita Ghahreman

Negative of a Group Photograph brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country. Negative of a Group Photograph runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran's book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love. The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar. Farsi-English dual language edition co-published with the Poetry Translation Centre.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Oct 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781780374376

Azita Ghahreman

Azita Ghahreman is the author of five collections of poetry, Eve’s Songs (1991), Sculptures of Autumn (1995), Forgetfulness is a Simple Ritual (2002), The Suburb of Crows (2008) and Under Hypnosis in Dr Caligari’s Cabinet (2012). In 2013 she was a recipient of Swedish PEN’s Prince Wilhelm Award. Russian and Ukrainian translations of her poems were awarded the Udmurtia Russian Academy’s Ludvig Nobel Prize in 2014. She was born in Mashhad in 1962 and has lived and worked in Sweden since 2006. Her pamphlet, Poems, was published by the Poetry Translation Centre in 2012. Negative of a Group Photograph, a dual-language Farsi-English edition (Farsi title: نگاتیو یک عکس دسته جمعی) translated by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar, is published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre in October 2018.

Book preview

Azita Ghahreman

NEGATIVE OF A GROUP PHOTOGRAPH

یعمج هتسد سکع کی ویتاگن

Translated by Maura Dooley

with Elhum Shakerifar

Negative of a Group Photograph brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country.

Negative of a Group Photograph runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran’s book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.

The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar.

Farsi-English dual language edition

NEGATIVE OF A GROUP PHOTOGRAPH

نگاتیو یک عکس دسته جمعی

Azita Ghahreman

آزیتا قهرمان

Translated by Maura Dooley

with Elhum Shakerifar

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly cooperation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

دوچرخه قرمز

Red Bicycle

دیو شب

Night Demon

گمشده

The Lost

آب سیاه

Glaucoma

با گلی سرخ

With a Red Flower

نگاتیو یک عکس دسته جمعی

Negative of a Group Photograph

آواره

Homeless

زندان

Prison

آزادی

Freedom

در گودی زمان

In the Depths of Time

اما

But

صحنه

A Panorama

نامه

Letter

فانو سها و گهواره ها

Every Tangled Branch

برف

Snow

کلمات

Words

آنچه بوده ام

That Which Once I Was

شعر

Poem

Happy Valentine

Happy Valentine

بارا نهای اول اردیبهشت

The First Rains of Spring

جلسه هیپنوز در مطب دکتر کالیگاری

Hypnosis Session at Dr Calgari’s Surgery

همه جا

Everywhere

اینجا حومه های کلاغ است

Crow’s Final Frontier

بهار

Spring

زمستان که بیاید

When Winter Comes

ماه

Moon

قایقی که مرا آورد

The Boat that Brought Me

ناگاه

A Glimpse

قطب نما

Compass

از نو

I Unfolded the Earth

About the Authors

Copyright

Remembering with affection and gratitude

Sarah Maguire,

poet, translator and founding director of

the Poetry Translation Centre.

Her warmth, hard work and vision brought together

poets from all over the world.

Introduction

Azita Ghahreman was born in Mashhad in 1962 and has lived and worked in Sweden since 2006. Her poetry has been translated into many languages including Swedish, German, Dutch and French; this book brings together the most comprehensive English language translation of her work to date. In selecting poems from across Azita’s entire oeuvre, we wanted to reflect the diversity of styles and themes in her work. The poems selected here span almost four decades, representing work throughout Azita’s career from the earliest of her five published books to several poems published for the first time.

Much of Azita’s work is deeply personal yet infused with political undertones. Her poems often reflect on her childhood growing up in a land-owning family in the South-Eastern Khorasan province of Iran – referenced in evocative images of the natural world amongst which she grew up – and on the changing face of modern Iran. In the poem ‘Glaucoma’, taken from her third collection of poetry, Forgetfulness is a Simple Ritual (1992), the changes to Iran’s political landscape are referenced as gradual blindness that slowly blurs the vision. Azita depicts her own family who, despite their differing affiliations and beliefs, still remain deeply connected, in the same way that Iran – a country that is home to numerous ethnicities and belief systems – continues to retain its united entity.

Thinkers and