Poetry Far from Home

By Jordan E. Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted October 21, 2004.

Last September, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ruled that manuscripts from countries such as Iran, Syria and others with which the U.S. is under a trade embargo cannot be edited, translated or published.

Although the work she deals with is published outside of Iran, the vague rules put Niloufar Talebi – writer, performer and director of The Translation Project – in an awkward position, as her work is expressly designed around translating, editing and publishing Iranian poetry.

"In the post 9/11 climate leading to the U.S.-Iraq war, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries have been mushed into one murky, Arabic-speaking, terrorist-threat-to-the-free-world zone," said Talebi, who lives in San Francisco. "Most Americans, even educated ones, are not aware of the vast differences in language, religion and government between Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan – a shortcoming that can be corrected by introducing literature in translation into the American culture."

Though the consequences of the OFAC ruling are still murky, it is enough to spark concern in Talebi. Meanwhile, she's pushing forward with her project.

The Translation Project seeks to track the rich tradition of Persian poetry in diaspora since the 1979 revolution, now that so many Iranians reside outside of their home country.

"Persian poetry is such a complicated area of discussion and one that I am still investigating," says Talebi. "In a nutshell one could say that the newer poetry has a more relaxed narrative style, experiments with newer forms, perhaps inspired by world poetry, and the subject matters range from deeply personal to erotic and takes fresher looks at the conditions of estrangement, hybridized living and recreated identities. The mid- to late 20th century Iranian poetry is just as different from the contemporary poetry as Stanley Kunitz is from Mary Oliver."

Poet in Exile

Talebi was born in London to Iranian parents and lived in Iran intermittently until she was fifteen, leaving the country after the 1979 Iranian revolution (earning her the title of '79er from a fellow Iranian American friend who immigrated before then). Having grown up in a household surrounded by "inspired poets, passionately engaged in the creation of literature" it's not surprising that she would mastermind such a project.

The project began back in 2002 when Talebi was approached by an American poet friend – who was doing co-translations of Uzbek poetry – to collaborate on translations of Iranian poetry.

"I picked this one legendary Persian poet, Forough Farrokhzad – who died in 1967 – to translate, thinking it was a good idea. But my poetic Farsi needed help and I kept calling my parents with questions." Her parents referred Talebi to an Iranian poet in Los Angeles to help with her Persian language skills.

"It was a beautiful, collaborative process; I became addicted to this chain-link process, going from one information source to do my translations, and then re-shaping them with my friend, who spoke no Persian, but who brought her American poetic sensibility to the work. A Persian poet friend was the one to say to me, 'What about us poets in diaspora? We haven't been translated!' I saw the dire need for this collective voice to be heard, so I researched from January to August 2003 to form the concept of the anthology.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld is a freelance writer living in Northern California and the host of Word by Word: Conversations with Writers, on KRCB Radio.

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