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“Load Poems Like Guns is an important book. It gives an eloquent and wrenching witness to voices from another place and another poetry: voices with a unique mix of formal power and personal pain. Eight Afghan women poets are eloquently translated here by Farzana Marie, including the tragic and luminously gifted Nadia Anjuman. This is a bilingual edition; the English and Dari are side by side, allowing us a glimpse of the mysterious and profound Persian poetic tradition. This is a book every poet and every reader of poetry should seek out. It amplifies our understanding. It broadens our sense of the identity of the poet. Above all, it makes available a rich and troubling narrative we need to hear.”--Eavan Boland, author of A Woman Without A Country (poems)
"This unique contribution fills a gap in our understanding of the Afghan people, their history and society. It is a must read."—Nancy Hatch Dupree, Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University
A groundbreaking collection of poetry by eight contemporary Afghan women poets in English translation en face with the original Persian Dari text. These poets live in Herat, the ancient epicenter of literature and the arts.
Frazana Marie is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern literature at the University of Arizona. She served as an active duty officer for over six years including two years of deployed service in Afghanistan. She is president of Civil Vision International, a nonprofit focusing on influencing international relationships.
“This book provides skillful literary translations of Persian Dari poems for English-language readers. They read like poems written effortlessly in English, with none of the stiltedness and archaisms of translations by less able translators. The poems are furnished with valuable biographical notes about their authors, brief critical commentaries, and insightful notes on the translation process and the difficult choices that it involves.
The introduction provides a thorough historical and cultural context for these poems’ creation in the Afghan city of Herat, complete with scholarly references. Most compellingly of all, the author includes valuable primary material in the form of interviews with some of the significant players in Herat’s literary scene, including those of the translated poets who are still alive. These interviews and the author’s firsthand knowledge of the community offer an unprecedented and fascinating insight into the training, social interactions and creative practice of young female poets in contemporary Afghanistan. The introduction also sympathetically recounts the challenges these poets have faced, whether being forced underground during Taliban times or having their careers – or their lives – tragically cut short by those close to them who disapproved of their intellectual activities. As such, it is a valuable socio-historical documentation of an important Afghan cultural form and the changes it is undergoing – a story rarely told about Afghanistan in these troubled times."--Dr. Zuzanna Olszewska, University of Oxford, author of The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran, forthcoming from Indiana University Press
CONTENTS
CONTENTS 7
FOREWORD 8
TRANSLITERATION SYSTEM 9
PREFACE 12
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14
INTRODUCTION 16
Why Poetry? Why Herat? 16
Herat: A Brief History 16
Nadia Anjuman: Sketch of Her Life and Work 17
General Note on the Translations 20
NADIA ANJUMAN 23
Makes No Sense 26
Mountain, Sea 30
My Garden 34
Divine Beauty 37
Smoke-Bloom 40
FARIBA HAIDARI 43
Odor of Death 45
A Young Street-Vendor Thinks of Imported Goods 54
And Violet Tunes of Lawlessness 58
FERESHTA NILAB SAHEL NOORZAYI 67
But I Couldn’t 69
These Days 72
Sincerity 76
Red Line 79
Farewell 81
SOMAYA RAMESH 84
The Girl Who Sold God 84
And the Word Null 88
Another Looking Glass, Another Lie 91
Load Poems like Guns 93
For Nadia Anjuman 96
ELAHA SAHEL 99
Prelude 101
Sinful Skirts 103
Ode to My Earrings 105
Rows of Pockmarked Homes 107
Didn’t He Come Home? 109
A Canvas 111
Protest 113
ROYA SHARIFI 122
A Gamble 123
Fragrance of Dreams 125
Those Bleeding Tulips 127
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 129