Indian News & Interviews (INI)

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:

MARYAM ALA AMJADI
--- Iranian Poetess
By Mohammed Fakhruddin

--Photo by Suman Kanal

BIOGRAPHY:
 
Maryam Ala Amjadi

Born 01/01/1984 Tehran, Iran
6-7 years stay in Bangalore, India (childhood, from age 7-13)
Attended Kendra Vidyala and Sophia High School in Bangalore
Impact of India:
http://www.museindia.com/showcurrent7.asp?id=891
http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2008/november/111708amjadi_iwp.html
Me, I and Myself, collection of poems written in English, a bilingual edition (with Farsi translation), Tehran Seda Publications, Tehran, Iran 2003
Random publications of poems in Tehran Times Daily
Online Journals Publication:
Muse India
http://www.museindia.com/showcurrent7.asp?id=891
Kritya
http://kritya.in/0409/En/poetry_at_our_time8.html
Literature Northeast, Interpoetry Journal:
http://interpoetry.com/maryamalaamjadi17.html
Thanal Online
http://www.thanalonline.com/Issues/04/Interview_02_en.htm
http://www.thanalonline.com/Issues/04/poems_15_en.htm
 
B.A. in English Literature, Allameh Tabatabaei University, Tehran-Iran (2006)
M. A. in English Literature, Department of English, University of Pune, Pune-India (Since 2007)
Persian-English News interpreter at the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) Tehran-Iran (2006-2007)
Member of the World Poets Society (W.P.S)
Member of the Youth Scholars Club in Tehran-Iran
Silver Medalist in the 14th National Literary Olympiad in Iran (2001)
Awarded Honorary Fellowship in Creative Writing, at the International Writers Program (IWP) at University of Iowa, U.S.A (Fall 2008)
http://iwp.uiowa.edu/writers/index.html
Performance in Jazz Poetry Reading Concert, Pittsburgh-U.S.A (September 2008)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=71212&sectionid=351020105
Second Prize (on Gender issues) in the A.K Ramanujan National Paper Reading Competition, University of Baroda, Gujrat-India (January 2009)

 
Q: How many Persian poems you have translated so far?
 
A.     There was once an empire called Persia. When I am told I am Persian, I become a foreigner in my own country, a stranger in a land that exists only in the past and I consider myself too young to afford Nostalgia. I have translated quite a few poems from Farsi into English. About 10-12 poems by Forough Farrokhzad and a few others by Sohrab Sepehri and also I have translated an entire collection of poems by Behzad Zarrinpour entitled “May the Sun Shine from Four Directions” none of which have been published until now. However, I have translated a selection of Raymond Carver’s poems from English into Farsi and it now awaits publication in Iran.
 
Q: What are the difficulties you usually come across while translating poetry from one language to the other?
 
A.     Before taking up the demanding task of translation one has to believe in the translatability of the text. Translatability, on the other hand, enforces its own challenges. Language is so intertwined with culture or rather it is better to say that language is originated in culture. Therefore translation of one text into another language at some level is the translation of the source culture and introduction of it into the target language. With poetry of course, there are even more complications. There are some who don’t believe in the translatability of poetry at all and they do have a point, one reason perhaps is that they are evaluating poetry in terms of language. But there is more to a poem than just the language. A poem is an adjustment of form, semantics and style, tone and overtone and of course the discovery of “idea” which is the core of the poem. Translation is the readjustment of all these elements in addition to the recovery of the “idea” of the poem. When a poem is not so “language” based, the discovery of methods to recover the idea of that poem becomes much easier, but then of course the aesthetic function of language has to somehow be compromised.  I don’t assume anyone could possibly enjoy reading a poem with too many footnotes.
 
Q: Could you please name some of the best translators of Persian poetry at present?
 
A.     Interpretation of Classical Persian poetry is not an easy task. By interpretation, I mean decoding the “text” into a language by means of which a poem can be more “experienced” than “enjoyed”. Because poetry is all about experiencing experiments. To define poetry in terms of inducement of pleasure is very crude, so I think. Classical Persian distinguishes Earthly love from Celestial love. On the other hand, sometimes Earthly is seen as the ascending ladder that can possibly elevate to the status of a Celestial lover, particularly a lover and seeker of the love of the Divine. Take for example the Ghazals of Hafez, there is the question of interpreting them in terms of the so called earthly love or mystic God. Who is this “ou” (non gender specific singular pronoun in Farsi) that Hafez is talking about? Is it a Woman as the beloved and therefore the object and objective of his writing? A Man with whom he holds a platonic or mystic relationship? Or is it just the Divine flow of love that may or may not be personified as earthly? This is just one of the complications of translating the so called classics. So I think, apart from translation skills and competence in the source and target language, our evaluation of a translator’s task should also be in terms of his/her approach to the text. Interestingly, Persian poetry was initially introduced into the world of English readers by non Iranians! Edward Fitzgerald with translation of Omar Khayam’s poetry, James W. Redhouse and E.H Whinfield’s translation of the world renown Sufi poet, Mawlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi known to the West as Rumi back in 1880’s and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s translation of Sa’di are among these.
 
Q: Could you please name some of the greatest Persian poets whose works are still fresh in 21st      
     Century and everlasting?
 
A.     Sa’di, Hafez and Rumi are widely acknowledged as what I would hesitantly call “canons” of classical Persian poetry. These poets are unique in the sense that understanding their work is deeply rooted in Islamic and Persian traditions, Arabic and Persian language and cultures, Sufism and Islamic mysticism and also the history of the era they happen to fall in. At the same time, they are also recognized as poets who have developed “Universal” themes, but one can question the unilateralism of universality itself. I mean why do some texts get translated and some just don’t? Why one type of writing or writer is marginalized? I personally delight in experiencing the fresh poetry of Ferdowsi, the author of national Iranian Epic “Shahnaameh”, Vahshi Bafghi, Obeyd Zakani, Hatef Esfehani and Rabi’ah Balki also known as Rabi’ah Bint Kaab Ghozdary.
 
Q: In what way Persian poetry is far superior to English poetry and what  
     makes Persian poetry rare in its content when compared to English   
     poetry?
 
A.     I don’t think the question of superiority is even debatable. English and Persian poetry have defining features and elements that are unique and peculiar to their own contexts and frameworks. We have to be careful about these designations. When talking about Persian poetry, are we talking in terms of the culture or the language? Because there quite a many non-Iranian poets who write in Persian or Farsi dialect. Like Wasef Bakhtari and Nadia Anjuman who write in Persian and are located as “Persian” poets though they are of Afghan nationality. So if we are talking in terms of language, one can’t possibly claim that one language is superior to another, neither is culture.  It is the uniqueness of diversity that ultimately results in sublime unison. The persistent rising sun in the East needs as much to set in the West and the day and the night meet in twilight. Each is unique on its own and functions uniquely in diversity.
 
Q: What are the burning issues Persian poets dealt with in the past?
 
A.     Abu Ali Sina Balkhi of the 1oth Century known to the West as Avicenna was a poet as well as a physician, a philosopher, a chemist, mathematician, geologist, astrologist, logician and a soldier. He was known as a “Hakim”(scholar) means someone who possesses “Hekmat” (knowledge and capability to engage in a diversity of fields ) perhaps an expanded version of the Renaissance Gentleman who had to be well versed in Religion and mysticism as well. So you can imagine what the issues he dealt with in his poetry were. He also has a book on Medicine which is written in verse. The issues that a poet tackled was also dependent on the type of poetic form and style that he wished to accommodate them into. For example, the theme of the Ghazal (adapted by Hafez and Sa’di) was usually unattainable love entwined with Islamic mysticism and Sufism. Then we have Sa’di’s (13th century) two immortal collection of verse and prose, the Bustan (The Fruit Orchard) and the Gulistan (The Rose Garden)The Bustan is in Masnavi (rhyming couplets) and consists of recommended virtues , moral codes and conducts to its readers  . It also includes anecdotes and glimpses of his experiences while on many of his journeys because Sa’di was very fond of traveling. A real vagabond, he saw traveling one of the many paths to mental and emotional maturity.  Obeyd Zakani of the 14th century took up writing satiric verses in which he debated politics of his times with a sharp and bitter tongue, particularly in the “Masnavi of the Mouse and the Cat” and Ethics of Aristocracy”. A social critic of his times, his work are often marginalized because their coarse and suggestively “dissolute” language. This is just a glimpse of the diversity of classical Persian literature.
 
Q: Could you please name some of the contemporary living Persian poets   
      who command respect and world recognition?
 
A.     I love Forough Farrokhzad and it is always very hard to talk about the things you love. She passed away in a car accident in 1967 but I cannot resist from placing her on the top of the living poets list. I don’t think after her, we have had a poet as controversial and as path breaking as her. She is among the very few poets who are known by their first name. People refer to her and her poetry as “Forough”. Simin Behbahani who was nominated for Nobel Prize is also unique in her work. I personally like some of the poems by Khatereh Hejazi and Reza Shantiya. There are more names but these are my personal preferences and as far as the “I” (eye) stretches, it can’t go beyond relativism. Not in this life time, not now.

 
Q: What's the poetry scene today?  What kind of poetry is being written by
     Contemporary living poets the world over?
 
A.     There is some difference between poetry of “I” and “you” and “and poetry of “we” and “us”, not quite unlike the line some draw between the personal and the public. Many art forms have lost their core value; I don’t mean ethical but existential value. Take for instance music. It was once considered a rare talent and an even rarer occasion to listen to music. Now music is everywhere thanks to the electronic advancements. Which is quite fine in many ways but it has made music so available. And this reckless availability has in return shaped our taste within its accessibility in a way that sometimes it is just hard to discern noise from music. One may almost say the same about poetry. All kinds of poetry are written today but we have to be careful with what we choose to read initially because it shapes our poetic taste and appetite.
 
Q. Will poetry survive in this century?  If so, in what form and style do you  
     predict?
 
A.     There was a time when poets were regarded as prophets and prophets were tagged as poets. It is said that the Iranian poet, Forough Farrokhzad predicted the time of her own death in her last collection of poems “Let Us Believe in the Cold Season”. They say Mozart wrote a requiem for his very own funeral. But what our age needs most is not prediction but a sort of realization, an awareness that the future is here and now, even if that means that the fleeting lightness of the present will now weigh more on the scale of responsibility. Will poetry survive this century? Well, oppression, sexual harassment, discrimination, suppression and cruelty have survived in all kinds and forms so far, so why shouldn’t poetry endure? I am not trying to equate these “puny” vices with poetic voice. Far from that, literature and poetry in particular have a significant role in regulating the emotional intelligence of individuals which in return can modify the vicious into the vivacious through pathos. Rabindranath Tagore said Every time a child is born it brings with it the hope that God is not yet disappointed with man. Every small word, every verse, every sentence is a sign that we may love the abyss as much as we fear it, not because we can fill it up with the abundance of words but because it gives us the chance to link and pair as much as to leave and part. It is the choice we make that makes us. I mean “make” in every sense of the word, the chance to create and to relate to ourselves as much as to others.
 
Q. Poetry is not a saleable product and, what made you take up poetry
     writing? 
 
A.     Being a poet is something more of an identity than a profession. Personally, I have never met someone who has firmly and boldly written POET on an official application form. You can’t earn much by writing poetry and perhaps the only satisfaction you get is when you meet the reader somewhere in the lines. Even if that reader is yourself. After all, the first reader of a poem is the poet. It is this dual situation that enables him/her to live and relive the life he has more contributed than created.
 
Q. Who inspired you to be a poet?
 
A.     I really can’t blame anyone for indulging me to commit the lovely crime of writing. It is said that there are those who run after poetry and there are those who poetry runs after. Well in my case, I guess there wasn’t much running on either side. Initially, it was my way of claiming a space in the world outside. My mother was first the person who encouraged me to keep writing. Sometimes people see the map of the roads that you may tread on years later or maybe you decide to turn to the roads that they have mapped out for you. In both, there is a sense of premonition and this gives you a feeling of security as much as the thrill of a threat. The blood flows, the heart beats and you breathe. You are alive. This is more than an adventure.
 
Q. What kind of poetry is being written in Iran today?
 
A.     It is difficult to talk about the current trends of poetry in Iran. There is a fine line between what is called Official and Non Official writing. We have underground literature as well. Also there are marginal writers who actually prefer to publish electronically. We have writers in exile and writers who have migrated but whose voice still reaches Iran and has had an impact on the generation of previous and current writers. There are also writers who publish with pen names. So it is not so easy to talk about modern Iranian literature and Iranian writing in Diaspora. There is poetry which voices the social, political and cultural temperament of the era. There is poetry that acknowledges and poetry which criticizes and opposes. There are styles and forms that are considered traditional and there are ones that are fresh. There are ones that are a combination of both. There is the ghazal and the anti-ghazal. There is poetry which is intensely language oriented and replete with word play. Despite the profusion, one can’t say that free verse is very much in vogue. There are quite modern subjects entertained in traditional forms of poetry like the ghazal or even in rhyming couplets.
 
Q. Which regional poetry has impressed you the most and why?
 
A.     Russian poetry. I have read and reread Marina Tsvetaeva, Mayakovski and Anna Akhmatova. The madness in their poetry quenches my thirst for the unusual. Poetry that is sober does not interest very much as a reader. You know that poetry has come naturally to these poets, but nature does not mean easy. Oh no, nature is not easy at all. It is forceful, interpretably vindictive, unpredictable and sometimes even harsh. One cannot merely read Maykowski’s love poems. One has to shout them on mountain tops.
 
Q. Could you name at least one Indian living poet and a poem, which
     impressed you the most?
 
A.     There are quite a few but I could certainly name Kamla Das’s Through the Looking Glass. Amrita Pritam’s The Virgin. I also like some of the poems by Nissim Ezekiel. Das has a unique voice, bold and honest, a sincerity that is reluctant to compromise.
 
Q. Do you find any difference between Indian English poets and Iranian
     poets when they express the same thought in verse form in English   
     language?
 
A.     As I said earlier each language and culture has its own traits which are unique and peculiar to that language and culture. There was a time I used to believe in differences. I mean, there certainly are differences about us but you don’t have to believe in them. I have often said that the danger lies not in our words but in the cords of faith that run or rein them. All people are one under the sun. We are all the same if we are not beguiled by the dissimilar form and format of our existence. I think the different forms complement each other. As Yeates says “though leaves are many, the root is one”!
 
Q. What is poetry for you?
 
A.     At times I feel that poetry is my enemy and that I should deal with it as it befits an enemy. Love thy enemy. And that is what I do. It is my enemy because it is violent to me. It is an invader. It demands my attention and claims my being and I often succumb not because I don’t have a choice but because I know that if I tame its wildness as much poetry reins me, I won’t be left alone in the wilderness. It is only then that it becomes my friend. There will be the two of us as one and as long as it is this way, there is no sense of abandonment. Living in this blend is like living on one’s joints. If your relationship with poetry is fractured you look miserable and pathetic, emotionally bankrupt and sentimentally paralyzed.
 
Q. Could you throw light on your personal life, poetry and poetics?
 
A.     My personal life?  The personal is boring to some unless it is made public. I am too young to talk about poetics of my own life. Camus said I don’t want to be genius I already have enough trouble being a human being. What will I say? That being a poet does not save you from the trouble of being a human being? That being a human being does not save you the trouble of being a woman? Charles Bokowski said when a woman does not carry about her mirror in her hand bag only then she can talk of liberty and freedom with me. I don’t have one in my hand bag but I do have one inside me which I cannot afford to shatter or overlook.
 
Q. Why did you choose Free Verse as a means of your expression?
 
A.     I did attempt rhyme for a while, but I am experimenting with forms now. Rhyme can be a poet’s pitfall, so can irony and other so called literary devices. But sometimes defining your boundaries with the symmetric stones of rhymes and other rhythmic patterns can make you even more creative in carving out a window on the paper for the words to stay intact and breathe and not escape.
 
Q. What images and symbolism do you usual use to convey your thoughts
     and feelings?
 
A.     I don’t see a poem, as a whole, conductive of my thoughts and feelings. T.S. Eliot believed that poetry is not an expression of emotions but an escape from them. That is maybe one of the many explanations as to why many poets have written love poetry while they were not even in love. Imagery is layered within the architecture of the poem as a whole and symbolism for me is a matter of frequency. There are some words that are highly frequent in a poet’s work and it is those very words that can convey to a certain degree what the poet is most challenged to not write about and avoid when he/she is holding the pen.
 
Q.  Do you confine yourself to be a poet and translator?  If not please
     explain?
 
A.     My love for a verb is more than my regard for a noun and I prefer actions more than definitions. With the verb there is the present tense, with the noun, a sense of the finite. I don’t consider myself a poet; I am simply someone who writes poetry. I am someone who translates. After all as Paul Valery said, a poem is never finished, only abandoned. Other than that I also write essays and articles. I have attempted fiction (short story) and plays too.
 
Q. Could you please comment on Japanese forms of poetry if at all you
     have come across?
 
A.     I am familiar with haiku as a reader but there has been no occasion for to shake hands with it as a writer. I have also come across Tanka. Both are very terse forms. I wonder if they are meant to be read aloud or just quietly meditated. I consider it a challenge both as a reader and as a writer.
 
Q. If you have been reading haiku contributed by poets from all over the  
     world in Poets International every month.  What do you find in them?
 
A.     I must say that they are very diverse which suits the name of this journal “Poets International”! It is actually nice to hear voices of different origins in one allotted space. I also found that they all deal very differently about the subject matter and theme of the haiku. Some use nature as a bed to lay down their ideas as the core of the poem. Others deal with it in a more sophisticated way by enforcing imagery to conjure states of mind. I do not know how the haiku tradition defines its theme but I am more familiar with the latter.
 
 
Q. What kind of poetry you prefer to read and write?
 
A.     Poetry that I can react to, to be more poetic, poetry that changes the composition of your blood. Personally I like poetry that slaps or poetry that occurs as a metaphorical rearrangement of literal derangements. As for what I prefer to write, I don’t feel that I am in the position to do that. I mean, as a poet, I am an experimenter of forms and contents. My preference lies only in the way I want to shape and accommodate them into the semantic house of words.
 
Q.  According to you, what makes poetry powerful and meaningful?
 
A.    The surprise element and I don’t mean just the twist in the end but the things that churns a poem with a sense of wonder into a question and of course imagery, running up and down, naked on the streets of imagination with the unnatural urge to lend your ear to the feminine and often distorted body of inspiration.
 
                                
Q.  What are your creative activities such as drawing, painting, music, singing, stage, dance and cinema?
 
A.    Was it Nietzsche who said, if it wasn’t for art, life would kill us? I don’t recall if it was him but he was obviously the one who said what does not kill us makes us stronger. I have a bit of a voyeur in me, who likes experiencing all these art forms visually. I am very much fond of eyeing the aestheticism of dances like the Bharatnatyam, Iranian traditional folk dances and the Devil dances of Sri Lanka. 
 
   
Q.  What kind of profession you personally prefer after completion of your studies?
 
A.    I am tempted by the smell of a road for which there is no map. I don’t mean that I don’t have plans. That would be ridiculous. I was planned to be planted here on earth and it would be very unwise to try to cure myself of my roots, because in the end we return to where we are, we always do, in a way or other. That is why people have memories. That is why they always leave things behind, not because they forget but because they want to return. Now to return to your question, I would like to take up something that has to with the pen. My fingers are wasted elsewhere. Teaching would also be another option, but I consider it a huge responsibility. The Persian poet, Hafez has a beautiful verse about shouldering responsibility. He says, (forgive my rough translation):

The sky could not carry (hold) the load of this Amanat (deposit), so they tossed the lots in the name of a lunatic like me. Now Amanat is something that you keep with you only in order to eventually return it to its lawful owner. So you are divinely responsible for it. What Hafez is trying to say (or rather what I assume he is saying) is that one’s life is a borrowed existence. The immensity of life and love allotted to beings by the creator is something you have to guard and not let go of without fighting for it. He says the lofty heavens were not capable of keeping this love, this flow of life within them for the creator. No one wanted to accept such huge responsibility. So they tossed the lots in my name, in the name of Man and mankind, which also means he was capable of dealing with the weight of this love, this flow. I was given the chance to experience this love and this life because I was divaaneh (mad) because I could love madly, passionately, immensely and unreasonably. Another Iranian poet, Forough Farrokhzad,writes:
 
When my life was nothing anymore
But the tick-tack of the clock,
I realized that I must must must
Love madly.
 
Q.  Your comments on Sufism? Have you ever come across any Sufis?
 
A.    Sufism just like many other designations has strayed from its original path. I don’t know what actually gives us the authenticity to recognize something as original and banish something as fake or substitute, but there was a time Sufism was intensely intermingled with thirst of quest. A Sufi began his/her path by Talab (asking). Asking for what? I don’t know. You knock and the door is opened to you even if it is closed on you once again. Because a door has to open as much it has to close. It is the inevitable function of it. If the first step was Talab, the last ladder was “Fana” something almost equal to the Buddhist Nirvana. But Sufism is now affected by many other trends of which I am not so familiar with. I can only say that community based readings of our individual lives as a text imposes its own dangers. If Sufism is about experiencing the height of selflessness and dissolving in the love of the creator, then this self needs to be thoroughly explored before it is abandoned and/or handed over, if you want to deny the self you have to give it the opportunity to acknowledge itself within and by you. But what are you? What is the self? How far can you be what you assume? These questions, regardless of their need to be answered or not, cannot be meditated in community. I admit that my impression of Sufism maybe immature but this is my personal observation of contemporary Sufism, that there is just too much noise and no scope for silent meditation. One of the many dangers of being part of a “spiritual” community is that one tends to be misguided and carried away by the falls and flow of a collective identity. The spiritual is an individual path, simply because each one of us is unique. Even in the physical and existential sense, no one can live our life or die our deaths for us. Of course there are many a great classical Persian Sufi poets like Rumi, Hafez and Sa’di who not only explored Sufi themes and imagery in their poetry but also criticized the misuse and misconception of the term and school during their respective eras. Hafez is so angry with the pseudo Sufis of his era that he often depicts them with negative overtones for their hypocrisy and misleading role of others. He tries to find that fine subtle thread between the fake and the real Sufi. But I would like to include here a rough translation of the contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri’s words. He has a totally different reading of religion and spirituality.
 
I am a Muslim (follower of peace)
My Mecca is a red rose
The piece of cloth I bend my head on is the brook; the rock I bow my forehead on is the light
The meadow is my prayer rug
I cleanse myself for prayer to the rhythm of the windows’ heartbeat
In my prayer there flows the moon, there flows rays
So clear is my prayer that stone is visible behind it:
All the particles of my prayer have become crystallized
I say my prayers
When the wind has called for it on the spires of the cypress

…. The direction towards which I pray is the shore
My prayer house is under the acacia trees
The house of my prayers shifts like the breeze, goes orchard to orchard, from city to city…

*

______________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mohammed Fakhruddin is a poet, journalist and Founder-editor of "POETS INTERNATIONAL", a monthly journal of short verse being published from India.<www.poetsinternational.com>