Ali Asadollahi: Fitting the Sea in a Cup
/Ali Asadollahi was born in 1987 in Tehran, Iran. He became interested in poetry in 2003, and since then he has devoted his time to poetry. His first book, A to Z, was published in 2010. In one of the most reputable Persian literary magazines of the time, the book was praised as "Best Young Poetry Book of the Year." To date, he has published five poetry books. His latest book, The Coco’s Tale, was nominated for the prestigious Iranian poetry book prize, the Ahmad Shamlou award, in 2019, but he withdrew in protest of the severe censorship of books in Iran. Ali Asadollahi is currently researching ways to create Persian dramatic poetry.
Olivia Samimy speaks with Ali about his journey as a writer below.
I love the concise way you use language in your six short poems. What inspired you to write them, and what was the most challenging aspect of creating this piece?
Writing these poems dates back to more than ten years ago, when I was diligently seeking poetry in every phenomenon and occurrence. I was determined to be a poet, and this desire involved continuous and professional writing activity as opposed to merely relying on intuition or what William Wordsworth calls “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” I was persistently exploring and discovering the Persian language by constant writing and wrote each of these poems, individually, as part of several poems with homogeneous forms or themes.
These short poems, at first glance, seem to be upshots of sudden outbursts of emotions, following noteworthy “moments” or “intuitions,” but I achieved these revelations through constant practice. I wrote and rewrote each of these poems several times so that I could portray subjective images in the best form. For me, form matters a lot and the value of “how to say” is not less than “what to say.” We Iranians share an expression saying “fit a sea in a cup,” and to me writing short poems corresponds to this expression.
In your note, you said you originally wrote the poems in Persian, and then they were translated to English. What is your translating process like?
For me, translating poems is an almost daily task. I have translated and published some works of T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Charles Baudelaire from English to Persian. But I don't generally go for big names; if I come across a poem that I can relate to, I will definitely think about recreating it in Persian. I use the word “recreate” here because that's what translating works of poetry means to me. In this process, I always make sure to turn the English pieces into original Persian poems, being loyal to the creation of Meter, Rhythm, and Rhyme in Persian. Translating has helped me to become more familiar with the linguistic and aesthetic structure of English poetry, leading me to improve my competence in Persian poetry as well by making use of poetic achievements of the English language. In translating poems from Persian to English, I try to convey the sense of poetry in the best way possible and find the right form and tone by reading and taking note of great English poems as the primary source of inspiration.
I understand from your bio that your book was nominated for the Shamlou Award in Iran, but you withdrew in protest of censorship. Can you tell us a little more about this?
Censorship is a severe issue in Iran. All literary works, including poems, are inspected and dissected word by word and line by line by agents of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Only when they find nothing in opposition to the interests of the current political system will they allow publication. This is how most libertarian, experimental, erotic, and anti-authoritarian poems are unjustly censored, and so-called "problematic" words, even words like “protest,” “kissing lips,” etc., are crossed out. In such circumstances, many poets prefer to publish their books online without the permission of the Ministry in opposition to its oppressive method of monitoring and censorship.
In a situation like this, a famous poetry award bearing the name of Shamlou, who is a prominent and liberal poet, goes against freedom of speech and Shamlou's ideals by only accepting books that have permission from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance for publication. Let me add that Shamlou is commonly known as the “Poet of Freedom.” He was against state control over publications and fought for the freedom of speech all his life. His books were censored for many years and could not be published.
Some of Iran's best poets are not allowed to publish their works. Therefore, this award deprived them of the right to attend. To expose this contradiction and protest against the anti-freedom of speech approach of this award, I designed and submitted my book, which I published underground without permission and censorship, with the image of licensed books of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance. After announcing my book as the final nominee for the Shamlou Award, I withdrew and wrote a piece in defense of freedom of speech. Inspired by the brilliant epistle “Areopagitica” by John Milton, which says, “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye,” I tried to remind the organizers of this award that I am an example of many poets who have been deprived of their fundamental right to publish their works due to censorship and violation of freedom of expression.
What is it about writing that makes it fulfilling?
Writing is a port in a storm for me, in which I can put my feelings, intellectual conflicts, and worries into words so that these personal and mental issues become common concepts. For me, poetry is a form of psychological therapy because, with the help of poetry, I can endure the passage of time and social inequality.
Under a totalitarian state, poetry is a form of resistance. By writing poetry, I say to those who want to kill other people's voices and imagination through oppression, execution, and threats: I am alive, and as long as I am alive, I will not let anyone stop me from dreaming and hoping. I write to both calm myself, tussle with the darkness of night, and pledge the inevitable daylight.
What advice do you have for fellow poets?
I want to tell them that even the best pieces of poetry in the world are not worth even a moment of the suffering of a single human being. The poet must move in a direction that recognizes the pain of humankind as much as s/he can and take the initiative to heal and ease them. A poet should look for spiritual alleviation by means of imagination. The poet tells people: while the propaganda and cultural apparatuses try to deprive people of their mind's eye, to make everyone similar, and to kill the imagination in them, I teach you how to imagine another state. The human being who can imagine is disenthralled from the closed fence established by ideologies and is prepared for intelligent and actual resistance. The poet must feel responsible for all the sorrows s/he sees in humanity, and s/he must react to these griefs in two ways: either write a poem that consoles the afflicted, or address the sources and agents of the pain and show them to others in a metaphorical way.
Are there any current projects you're working on that you can tell us about?
Yes. I currently have two major projects. One of them is a collection of poems-photos. In addition to poetry, I also practice photography and am presently writing poetic annotations on one of my photo collections in an integrated form. I'm also working on a collection of narrative poems being completed, and each of its poems is related to a day of the year. It's a kind of poetic memoir containing 365 verses.
Thanks for speaking with us. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Please allow me to express my deep concerns about three imprisoned Iranian writers, Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan-Mahabadi, and Keyvan Bazahn, who are members of the “Iranian Writers’ Association,” whose renowned slogan is “Freedom of speech without any restrictions.” These three writers were unjustly jailed on September 26, 2020, in a time that prisons are a hotspot for COVID-19 in Iran. Like all libertarians, I demand the release of these three freedom fighters.
(To know more about these writers, please click the link below:
https://pen-international.org/news/iran-writers-baktash-abtin-reza-khandan-mahabadi-and-keyvan-bazhan-imprisoned)
Read Asadollahi’s most recent Roanoke Review publication here.
