Tahereh Saffarzadeh
طاهره صفارزادهA poet who went from the international avant-garde of the 1960s to a poetry of faith, and translated the Qur'an into English and Persian.
- Known for
- Safar-e Panjom (The Fifth Journey), 1977
- Forms
- Free verse (she'r-e sepid)
- Collection
- Contemporary
Tahereh Saffarzadeh was born in Sirjan, in Kerman province, and studied English literature in Tehran. In the late 1960s she went to the United States and took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she also wrote poems in English.
Back in Iran she published Tanin dar Delta (Resonance in the Delta, 1970), free verse, she'r-e sepid or white poetry without fixed metre, that combined experimental form with sharp social criticism. Over the 1970s her work turned towards religious faith, and The Fifth Journey (1977) is often read as the turning point: a poetry of spiritual quest and of the Qur'an.
After the revolution she was a university teacher of translation, wrote textbooks on the subject and produced a bilingual Persian and English translation of the Qur'an. She died in Tehran in 2008. She remains one of the few poets whose career spans both Iran's modernist and its religious poetry.
Saffarzadeh's poems are in copyright. We publish them only with permission from the rights holders; until then we write about the work.
Booksکتابها
The principal works of Tahereh Saffarzadeh.
Resonance in the Delta
طنین در دلتاFree-verse poems written after her years in the United States, mixing images of travel, the city and modern alienation with pointed social criticism. It established her as one of the boldest women poets of the period, and one of the few Iranian poets then writing from direct experience of American literary life.
The Fifth Journey
سفر پنجمLong free-verse poems that turn from social protest towards spiritual quest, drawing on Qur'anic language and imagery. Critics usually treat it as the pivot of her career and a forerunner of the religious poetry of the years after 1979. Its long lines and visionary tone are unlike anything else in her earlier work.
Tahereh Saffarzadeh in Iranian history
Iranian historyThe Pahlavi century and afterدوران پهلوی و پس از آن
Two Pahlavi shahs built railways, universities and a centralised state, while poets, novelists and film-makers created a new Persian culture. The era ended with the revolution of 1979.