Pegāh Ahmadi (Persian پگاه احمدی) is an Iranian poet, scholar, literary critic and translator of poetry. She is currently the ICORN Guest Writer in Frankfurt City of Refuge.
Ahmadi began writing poetry at the age of seven, and made her début as a poet at age seventeen by the publication of a poem in the literary magazine Takāpu, edited by Mansur Kushān. She has studied Persian literature at the University of Tehran, and regularly contributed to literary magazines on subject matters related to criticism of verse, theoretical issues pertaining to poetry and translation of poems. She is a member of Iranian Writers Association. In 2007 she was awarded the Celebrity of Poetry Award of the Iranian Journalists' Institute.
In the beginning of her literary career, Pegah Ahmadi's poems were associated with linguistic experimentation as was the case with many Iranian poets in the 1990s. But then she took up political and social themes because she considered them to be more relevant. She has especially taken up issues of the history and the changing role of women in society, reflecting also what consequences these changes have for writing as a woman.
Ahmadi has published several books of poetry, anthologies, literary reviews and translation of American poetry (like Sylvia Plath). Before coming to Germany, she worked as editor of the literary review Paperik and taught "Poetry in cinema" at the Film School Tehran.
She says of her own approach to her work:
"There comes a time in your life when sentimentalism can provide no answer to everyday questions. You are confronted by the blackness of your culture and the depth of your history and are compelled to devote attention to the responsibility that society brings with it. Personal experiences and abstract games can no longer match such entities."
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Please continue to read Pegah Ahamdi's poetry!
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A CIRCLE HAS SWALLOWED MY VOICE
I remember my city
with these red shapes:
Triangle of an interrogator
Horror
And a circle
that has swallowed my voice
Laces of boots are tightened
around my neck
and my crime is
That I've written that
Morning newspapers
looked like our wounded mouths!
I remember my city
with these red shapes:
Doubt and distrust
And fear of not knowing which friend
Has a hidden recorder in her pocket.
FEAR
You can commit the crime of walking with me
All agree here is deserted
The fear pull down the drape
Only the loops of hanging ropes are remained
And escape is apparent on life's feet.
This long street is getting alike my memory
The winner is the boot
And the tree which is driven to the mouth of alley.
No ! you ! big banners!
Nothing excelled
Except GISH's whore houses, night containers
And run away terminals!
Nothing remained
Except us having lived in this city
Fearing public gates
Fearing university gates and unknown taxi drivers.
With the blood in canals, torture cables
And disconnection wires!
Don't fear anymore
My sisters went to the sea with dollars
And my brothers were wrapped in a grass and
Were smoked circle by circle to the air.
Here we are missed
And over there, the smile is dropping from the picture they sent us.
I fall down
You should increase the dose of my tablets
The night doesn't fall me asleep
Till the blue tablets be a poet
I'm not a poet ! never!
This is the matter!
The park puts loud speakers searching for the lost
The fountain puts up to say loudly that
All the fountains are closed
They knocked and knocked at the door
Exactly like this
Like this or another
In this way or...
This ! this which is that
Or that ! that which is this
They knocked severely at the door in my poem.
Don't fear!
My hand is too little to close
When the child is sleeping in the whole of the door
Which just one eye
They encroach on the scene of satellite!
My hand is too little to take hold of
My air doesn't climb the mountain
My shoes aren't similar to my life
I take my fear in to the taxi
Take the taxi to the city
Take the city to the capital
I gave up the poem with my shirt, my blanket, my cardigan, my dress
And it went.
Didn't I?
The sentences were deserted flowerpots
And my reason was a big cloud
When it rains
I draw a poem similar to my mouth
They locked it!
I have enough reason
The lost one was crying in a shirt which I don't remember
Crying doesn't go with me any more
Now, I'm in another place
The loud speakers make me loud
And the branches of trees make me short
I fell in love with a woman
Not to write feminine poems!
I grow to make everything small
And I'm too big for my mind
They painted my footprints to the air
And all I had on the earth is lost
I'm searching for the reason not the cause
I'm searching for the cause not the provider of
The doer is some one poor who has been eaten by the act
I have eaten my words
And my verses hide behind the wall, door and in the wardrobe.
Whose fault is it?
When I came to be instinctive as a cow
I have many things to say
They knocked severely at the door in my poem:
Stop!
VIOLENCE OF CRAYONS
Giant tables
Giant Seminars
Giant flags
Giant leaders
Giant wars
Giant prides
Giant dictators
Giant empires
Giant congresses
Giant bombs
Giant banks
Giant contracts
Giant mafias
Giant graves
Giant parties
Giant agreements
Giant disagreements
Giant heroes
Giant nuclear weapons
But the world for me
Is only a small box
of Violence of crayons.
HOW COURAGEOUS IS MY TEHRAN
In the film
I see Gruesome images of legs,
chests, mouths, flesh,
skin, and bodies torn limb from limb
The world bears witness to our Green Sea
How hot sticky crimson spills
from the eyes, noses and throats
The vote for a new life to blossom
decreed
on a jade band above their brows
To birth an incandescent rainbow meant
to resuscitate restricted life
Oh oh oh
How tenacious is my vote
With dank dark single occupant cells
One meter by one meter and a half
How tenacious is my Tehran
And how the guard, stands down
Oh oh
This is my University
The air of protest, tears and
pleads for freedom echo through
its iron gate
Look!
That scream
that has torn the picture is me
Where is my vote?
Where is my vote?
The whole world has lit candles for us
How tenacious is my university
The more it's butchered,
the louder the echoes become
In the film,
I see Gruesome images of legs,
chests, mouths, flesh,
skin and bodies torn limb from limb
But my Tehran
All its windows are Cameras and voices
We televise it to the world's mind
Look!
How courageous is my Tehran
The more it's butchered
the louder the echoes become
Oh oh oh
Dear Neda!
Dear Sohrab!
Dear Kianoosh!
Dear Peyman!
Dear Taraneh!
I want to embrace the stained earth
and weep from my heart
And show
all the undated and unnamed
mass graves to the world
