Writing West Midlands

On Wednesday 9^th May 2012 we welcome the Poetry Translation Centre’s Persian Poets’ Tour to Birmingham. The tour features five acclaimed poets from three countries- Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan taking part in a series of events across the UK alongside their UK poet-translators.
We are delighted to welcome two of the poets, Partaw Naderi and Shakila Azizzada, both from Afghanistan along with their translators Sarah Maguire and Mimi Khalvati to join us for An Evening of Persian Poetry, Wednesday 9^th May, 6.30pm – 8pm at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.

With two weeks to go until the event, this week we would like to tell you a bit more about Partaw Naderi.

Born in Badakhshan, Afghanistan in 1952 he graduated from the Faculty of Sciences at Kabul University in 1976. He was arrested as were many Afghan intellectuals and artists by the Communist Regime in Kabul and imprisoned in the infamous Pulcharki Prison in 1984; he remained here until the end of 1986. It was shortly after this that he began writing poetry.

In 1997, he fled to Pakistan where he worked for the Dari programme of the BBC World Service until 2002. After years of exile, he recently returned to live in Kabul where he is former President of Afghan PEN. Naderi is now regarded as one of the leading modernist poets in Afghanistan. He is also a socio-political activist and his poetry is a reflection of his social and political views. His collections include: An Elegy For Vine, Leaden, Moments of Execution and A Lock on the Gate of Ashes.

The Mirror, by Partaw Naderi

I have spent a lifetime in the mirrors of exile

busy absorbing my reflection

Listen —

I come from the unending conflicts of wisdom

I have grasped the meaning of nothingness
Kabul 1989, translated by Yama Yari & Sarah Maguire, the Poetry Translation Centre

The Bloody Epitaph, by Partaw Naderi

This palm tree has no hope of spring

This palm tree blossoms

with a hundred wounds

— the daily wounds of a thousand tragedies

— the nightly wounds of a thousand calamities

This palm tree is a bloody epitaph

at the crossroads of the century

*

Here, by the river

— a river of blood and tears —

the roots of this palm tree

are congealed with disaster

are knotted with the blind roots of time

*

Here, the sky

unwinds its bloody cloth

from barren red clouds

to shroud the shattered lid of a coffin

— a broken mirror of rain

This palm tree has no hope of spring

*

This palm tree has no hope of spring

This palm tree is starred

with a hundred bruises

from the whip of the north wind

My palm!

My only tree!

My spring!

Many years have passed

since the bird of blossoms

flew away from your desiccated branches

Butterflies abandon you

My heart is broken

Kabul, November, 1989 translated by Yama Yari & Sarah Maguire, the Poetry Translation Centre

On a Colourful Morning, by Partaw Naderi

I kissed her —

her whole body shivered

Like a branch of almond blossom in the wind

Like the moon, like a star

trembling on the water

I kissed her —

her whole body shivered

Her cheeks showed one colour

her gaze revealed another

And the sun rose from her tender heart

And the thousand-and-one nights of waiting

ended

And on a colourful morning

I shared a bed

with the meaning of love

July 2002, Peshawar City

Image from Poetry Translation Centre's website. Photo credit: Crispin Hughes

You can read further poems from Partaw Naderi on his website, http://partaw100.blogfa.com/ and you can see original poems in his native language of Dari as well as the English translations on the Poetry Translation Centre’s website, www.poetrytranslation.org/

Information taken from: http://partaw100.blogfa.com/ and www.poetrytranslation.org/

To see details about this event and to book, please click here.