Project Description
Ali Abdolrezaei
Ali Abdolrezaei was born 10 April 1969 in Northern Iran. He completed his primary and secondary education at his city of birth and after receiving his Diploma in mathematics passed the nationwide university entrance exams. He graduated with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran Technical and Engineering University. He started his professional poetic career in 1986 and became one of the most serious and contentious poets of the new generation of Persian poetry.
Ali has had an undeniable effect on many poets of his generation by his artistic concepts of proposals through the medium of his poetry as well as speeches and interviews. And he is one of the few poets who succeeded to express his independent poetic individuality. Publication of eight varied books of poetry: “From Riskdom,” “Shinema,” So Sermon of Society”, “Improvisation”, “This dear cat”, “Paris in Renault”, “You Name this Book”, “Only Iron Men live in the rain”, endorse his poetic creativity and power. Currently he has in publication a poetry collection “La Elaha Ella Love” and a multi-textual “Hermaphrodite” that have been followed by varied critical reviews.
Nearly all well known poets and critics of Persian poetry have written about Abdolrezaei’s poems. In September 2002 after his protest against heavy censorship of his latest books such as Society and Shinema, he was banned from teaching and public speaking. He left Iran and after a few months stay in Germany, and two years in France, he’s been living in London for the last three years.
At “The Priory”
I am writing this letter for the girl who lived lonelier than the moon
the girl who one day alighted in the mirror
and with a little smile pulled a stone slab off my chest
Have you walked in the shoes at the foot of the stairs?
Why don’t you saddle the horses’ neighing?
It must be your eyes
that sometimes sound a few galloping neighs have horses
Our last happiness was the wind that’s gone with the wind
Even cows don’t lick at the river photo in these newspapers
nowadays
God’s legs have stuck out of the clouds’ skirts
These beds have come through women of old
Attack! Row your oars!
The sea always has so much more swimming than boat rides
We are human again
I have heard, from this very line you are hearing, at the end of the poem I am writing, at first dusk descends a little, then it rains and in the end the sound of the unsaddled neighing of a herd of horses, is running in my shoes.
The clatter of my feet in the stretch of my shoes by your side
dies today
I don’t know what wool to pull over I don’t know
I don’t know?
Like a woman who lived two years in my eyes
isn’t it a sin to drag me so from bed to bed?
How can I command these trembling soldiers facing you, O life
to fire?
From the shoes at the foot of the stairs
comes the sound of galloping horses
don’t you believe me?
You! Standing there beyond the end of this letter
just send me two eyes
to cry