Forugh Farrokhzad

c. 1934 - 1967

A leading modernist female Iranian poet.

Forugh Farrokhzad was the first woman poet in over a thousand years of Persian literature to present feminine perspectives with recognizably female speakers in lyric verse. In her 150 or so mostly short poems, composed from the mid-1950s onward, she established the female gender and voice in the Persian language.

Farrokhzad is controversial and the most translated twentieth-century Iranian poet. Frank and personal representations of feelings and views in everyday situations, both palpably Iranian and emotionally universal, characterize her verse, for which faith in art and love constitute the spiritual underpinnings.

Bibliography

Farrokhzad, Forugh. Bride of Acacias: Selected Poems of ForughFarrokhzad, translated by Jascha Kessler with Amin Banani. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982.

Hillmann, Michael C. A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1987.

— MICHAEL C. HILLMANN