Sunday, June 17, 2007
Melissa Tuckey Interviews Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh
Foreign Policy in Focus brings us Melissa's terrific interview with the poet Farideh Hassanzadeh. Here's an excerpt:
During the imposed war between Iran and Iraq, one journalist reported about the poetry he found in the trenches and foxholes survived after the dead soldiers, poems like this from Forough Farrokhzad:
Remember the flight
the bird is mortal
And everybody knows that one of the most important reasons why people rebelled against the Shah regime was the persecution and execution of a young poet, Khosro Golsorkhi, who was a political prisoner. In military court he refused to ask the Shah for amnesty and bravely declared: "I don't beg for my life. I have always written for my people and I defend only my people not my own life. "
My people never forgive the execution of a poet. It is the execution of words. That is
why Federico Garcia Lorca is the most popular foreign poet in Iran.
