‘For Our Country’ by Shahein Farahani
My greetings to you, women who are concerned
for our country
Women bewildered by all that they have learned
of our country
This is such a powerful poem. Wow.
I’d never heard of Shahein Farahani until I came across this poem. From what I’ve read, she published under the name ‘Shahein Farahani’ (I’ve also seen her name written Shahin Farahani, real name Fatemeh Farahani) and wrote poetry in 19th century Iran, focusing on women’s rights. I really liked this poem and I’m definitely going to check out more of her work asap.
If you’re curious to read this one, there’s a link here.*
*I’ve read the criticisms for republishing these works with the authors’ real names as opposed to the male pseudonyms they adopted, and those critiques are valid and make a lot of points I hadn’t considered. I’m sharing the link because I can’t find Farahani’s poetry elsewhere and I really did enjoy her poetry. If anyone has links to find more of Farahani’s works, please do link me!
In trying to find her works, I stumbled upon the upcoming The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women, which I’m now really looking forward to! The collection ‘examines the work of over eighty female Persian-language poets from the past thousand years’! Can’t wait!
a writer’s blog. 