I left my name on the Land I stepped

A collaborative project with English painter Charlie Calder-Potts to illustrate this timeless narrative and its themes. She has taken people from the ‘here and now’ on the streets of Iran and placed them within the context of Persian Poems of Rosa Jamali.

Check more,...

Knotweed - Poem by Rosa Jamali

I've turned to an annual plant, shielded and armed, from the genus of hollyhocks and broad leaves

Whole five-thousand-year history is turning over my head

It was the moment that you were buried with no shroud

And I'm the weeds and icicles of this land, …

Had been climbing over the flames, it was a black ladder, burning my sole feet

It was the moment that I had chopped my heart, you had sucked my blood in that woundless bowl

Had been growing like a wildflower, had been living for millions of years

In Syriac over my body:

Nail-shaped herbs had written some letters.

I'm the genius of thorns with wounded heels of thousands of miles travelling in the oasis

My blistered feet, weary and my parched lips

Shattered by the mountain ranges I had been fighting with my claws

My roots are extended with the fluent liquid in the vessels

Lilacs had grown over my arms and now I've turned to the ivy as if burning in the fire

I left my name on the land I stepped, …



And who's this weeping human child, lamenting two thousand years in my arms? Still weeping? ! Always weeping? !

I've been raising this child for six thousand years

I've grown this Persian hero to send him to the battlefield

Breastfed him

And he has grown out of my eyes

This extreme light which has blinded me….



(TRANSLATED From original Persian to English by the Poet) 

The Biennial of Asian Poetry

Ecology and Environment in Persian Poetry

Talk By Rosa Jamali (India; Green Life Organization; December 2015)

Abstract:
1
Nature has always been a major theme in Persian Poetry. Persian Poetry pays a great tribute to Persian Mythology. Creation seems to have been taken place through a process of metamorphoses of natural resources, vegetation, flora, and fauna. This has made a great influence on Persian Poetry. In Khorasan School, Manuchehri Damghani depicts autumn and describes death and rebirth cycle in a very popular poem. In THE GREAT BOOK OF KINGS, Ferdowsi always describes gloomy scenes as the earth is not going to revive itself. Later in the Poetry of Hafez and Rumi nature creates lots of metaphors in reference to Islamic mysticism. In Modern Persian Poetry Nimā Yushij who lived a whole life in the countryside of Northern Iran describes nature very strongly while Sohrab Sepehri takes the initial steps to get close to a sort of belief; the manifestation of God in nature and creating a sacred halo around the environment,…
2
As Plato said poets recreate nature by imitation and modeling it as the major source of beauty so that the description of pure nature and the Garden of Eden is just found in poetry, poets preserve the untouched, pristine and serene nature this way. It’s a calamity when poets see the destruction of the life cycle in nature. Mother Nature is represented in poetry as an archetype so is the birth and death recycle. A poet insists on nurturing and raising what has been missed or ignored over the centuries to survive and maintain the energy sources of the planet earth
3
Based on Persian mythology there could exist a literary theory; quite close to ecofeminism; for Chista and Anahita have been depicted as wise and insightful Goddesses who play significant roles in nature's elemental forces whereas in Greek Mythology Medusa and Pandora have been described as sources of evil and destruction. I'd like to discuss that there could be a sort of rebirth in ecofeminism in Persian poetry, quite representative to what has already existed in our racial cultural and historical background and in reference to a sort of Manichean aesthetics,… this says that feminine writing cares much about nature and keeping it safe; feminine writing is in conflict with death, mass murder, genocide and abortion of beings ; Birth and Rebirth archetype and Mother nature could strongly appear in feminine writings, how can this type of writing dispense with slaughter and extinction of some species of nature,..?!
So that Persian feminine writing could present quite a unique point of view in this respect;.
4
In the visionary writings of many Persian mystic poets, for instance, the followers of illumination like Sheikh Shahabuddin Suhrawardi; there exists a kind of transcendental view towards nature. Mystical Visionary writings have been written in harmony of a life which could transcend you to heaven. This life which is quite peaceful and has been practiced through time, the path is not an easy one. You need to go through seven steps to become a real mystic; a sort of alchemist and reach to the kingdom of God which is called Malakut. You need to forget greediness and gluttony through fasting, you'll forget lust and temptations through a secluded lifestyle and you feel much closer to God by repeating holy verses, this makes you a better human being, a spiritual medium, and a peacekeeper.
5
Masnavi Manavi is a principal text for the seeker of a better life, getting to know about enlightenment, then the basic steps you need to take to see the world through the lens of a Suffist, through Persian wisdom and a divine ladder,. Sonnets of Rumi which I include them in occult reading give you a sense of Ecstasy and euphoria what makes you dance till you drop. That specific dance being a long-time ritual is called Sama; you'll become a different human being with Godly characteristics which help you to get to know to the kingdom of heaven, now you need to forget your earthly ambitions. You need to forget temptations and set a limit on your needs and wants. At last you'll get united with the whole universe, this step is called Malakut; by reading Masnavi in a holy place which is called Khanqah and taking its advice in your daily life, you'll become a selected human being; blessed with God and a heavenly guardian which paves your way to the kingdom of heaven.
6
Deconstruction made the literary theory quite easy, there is no binary opposition of nature/ man; so that there's no grand narrative. Wildlife can be created in poetry with no preconception. Nature makes and creates itself in a primitive process. All these mentions that human being is no longer the ruler of nature, the who one was supposed to be THE KING for a lengthy time,…
7
The idea has been very much inspired by advising letters to the kings of Persia before Islam; how to become a good and just ruler by hard practice and a kind of mental exercise, so great kings grow with Godlike features which have been bestowed upon them and being granted by heavenly inspirations; they need to follow the principles of good deeds, good thought, and good speech.
The story of Zahhak in Persian national epic" THE GREAT BOOK OF KINGS", is a very dark myth, a critical turning point. Persians were vegetarians before that, the cook persuades the king to eat meat and the king enjoys the taste. Later the cook prepares the brains of the human being as a delicious meal and consequently snakes as symbols of evil grow on his shoulders. The king becomes corrupt and this is the most oppressive era of history for such a nation of strong beliefs!

The Angles Of The Frame (Translated From Original Persian To English by the Author) By Rosa Jamali

1
Many years have passed since the day, 
I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face.
I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed.

2
Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium.

3
The bull I breast-fed for many years
And I've submerged into the frame.

4
I knew the justifications were hard,
Hard as against the current of water.
No news from the ambiguous points
something uncommon.
It can't be justified by natural rules,
many years we've been tangled on it.

5
This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands
No finger points in any direction.
Lost in the dead-end alleys
Tracing images without a compass.

6
Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood.
My kinsmen of horses…
Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle
like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof.

7
You can't stop the hands of the clock.
You can't come back to the broken minutes.
The days have been arranged one after another.
The knights have left the game one after another.

8
There was a straw mat where you fell asleep.
I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house.

9
Was something supposed to get away from the core
to join us?
A century has passed and we still live in this house.

10
Dimensions have shifted
Not exclusive to the roof
The letters approved us as the residents of the house
They ran away as the convicts
And we got used to the standstill.

THE LAST STREET OF TEHRAN / Rosa Jamali / Translated from original Persian to English by Franklin Lewis

Facing the airport,
all that’s now left in my grasp
is a crumpled land
that fits in the palm of my hand


Facing the wavering sunbeams
of a sun that is cross and will not speak with us.
All the way from the salt sands of Dasht-e Lut,
it came, a dream that made my fingers shift,
that set my teeth on edge, a muted breeze,
a whirlwind
spun from the sand dunes
all the way through the back alley of our house.


Pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh?


A short leap, no longer than the palm of the hand,
exactly the length you had predicted
A huge grave
in which to lay the longest night of the year to sleep
“Sleep has quit our eyelids for other pastures,
has dropped its anchor at the shores of garden ponds
has lost the chapped flaking of its lips,
poor thing.”


Pasting together the cut up fragments of my face to make me laugh?


With scissors – snip, snip – they’re cutting something up.
The alphabet shavings strewn on the ground,
are they the letters of our name?
With every other zig-zag,
rigid and unyielding,
in the middle of the salt dunes, flat and vast,
did you cage my mother’s breath,
her footprints fading
in the shifting sands?


Pasting together the cut up fragments of my face to make me laugh?
No!…
I will not return to the last street.
I left behind a shoe, one of a pair, for you to put on and follow after me
A strange shape forms
facing the horizon…
It fits in the palm of the hand!
A big leap, beyond what three legs could manage,
the length of the palm of the hand.

"From Poetry Anthology of Metropolitan Museum of Art"

Franklin Lewis  is associate professor of  Persian in the department of near eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago. His books include:
- Rumi: Swallowing the Sun (Oneworld, 2007)
- Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oneworld, 2000)
-Things We Left Unsaid: Zoya Pirzad, Translated from original Persian by Franklin D. Lewis (Oneworld, 2013)

How I turned to become an experimental poet:

 My talk at the British Library:

1

At the first step when I started my literary career the job was totally challenging for the range of set vocabulary was limited and not too many poets could generate a new style and create new metaphors or revitalise the themes used in Persian classics. I was born one year before the revolution and I grew up at the time of Iran-Iraq war, growing up at the most critical moment of Iran’s history made me a totally different person with a critical view towards the past and present. I usually create new metaphors facing the new subject matters of our society. Besides I felt that we need some new techniques to be much more creative, like narrating a poem through different voices or mingling a formal and informal language.




2

I’m from a generation living in a different milieu far from the classics and with a vague prospect of future for the mass immigration of Iranians. As a patriot there is a strong sense of local colour in my poetry with recurrent themes: Tehran has often been described as a lover, a metropolis with noise and pollution and massive highways, my concerns with the land and reminiscing the past have been expressed through the kind of condensed and language-based imagery I generally apply, allusive to our history.The outcome of such a hectic and traumatic background is that our fears and dreams are different from the generation past. They used to be hopeful,they used to have big goals, they believed in utopias and revolutions but they're all senseless to us and we’re obsessed with the trivial matters, I never judge the situations I usually describe in my poetry, I would let the reader feel and get it between the lines.




3

One of my main concerns is to revitalise the techniques of the past through some layers of intertextuality, there was a sort of writing in the past which was called visionary writing, it’s true to the essence of poetry, with a high sense of intuition to discover life by being through a mystic vision, a sort of trance-like state.In a comparative study the method could be taken as a sort of automatic writing which was a favourite of surrealist poets. I’m a lot influenced by this sort of writing in which you need to discover the unconscious side of the language or create the moment of being as Heidegger says. I still think that sufism is the main trend in Persian poetry which could be recreated through the objects within our everyday life.




4

Being obsessed with archetypes,I’ve been much inspired by a trend of mysticism in poetry which embodies the elements of nature and sees the manifestation of God in the nature and its harmony, a kind of phenomenological approach being seen in the visionary writings in which the boundaries like rhymes and rhythms haven't been considered, what matters is getting united with the whole universe through the words. I like the diction because it's far from the cliches and not so much repetitive as it is in mystical sonnets. In mystical sonnets the cup-bearer has always been taken as a medium of spirituality; as a result, a certain terminology has been created and applied for centuries. Unlike the sonnets in the visionary writings like the diary and letters of mystics the writer is free to apply any word he likes, whether inside the poetics or not, it doesn't matter much. I’ve also been inspired by Persian mythology and I usually mingle that within a modern atmosphere. The book of the kings contains mythological imagery which is quite appealing and surrealistic to my mind.

Iran in Writing: Past and Present
British Library, February 2015
Daljit Nagra, Rosa Jamali, Ahmad Karimi Hakkak, Shadab Vajdi, British Library's Speaker