- Freshtah Molavi
- Yale University
- “Az aasheghaaneh ta maadaraaneh: az ghazal ta ravaayat.”
Fereshteh Molavi is a Persian Specialist in the Near East Collection at Yale Sterling Memorial Library. She is an Iranian native with a Masters Degree in Library Science from Tehran University, and has worked as a bibliographer and scholar, as well as a freelance editor and translator. In 1998 she immigrated to Canada and worked for some years in Toronto as a cataloger and Persian language instructor. While still living in Iran, she published several articles and books, among them, a novel, The House of Cloud and Wind (1991), and a collection of short stories, The Sunny Fairy (1991). Listen to the Reed, a chapbook published by PEN Canada in 2005, is based on her dialogue with Karen Connelly, the award winner Canadian writer. Molavi has been included in Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women (London: Saqi, 2005) and Speaking in Tongues: PEN Canada Writers in Exile (The Banff Centre Press, 2005). Her stories and essays have been published in various Persian magazines and anthologies. She has had readings in Sweden and Canada. Her new collection of short stories in Persian will be released soon in Tehran. She spoke on the contemporary Iranian women writers at PIERs 2005 Summer Institute on Arts and Action in the Middle East.- AbstractThe paper will briefly discuss the poetry of Simin Behbahani, as one the three most famous Iranian women poets along with Parvin Etesami and Forugh Farrokhzad. It will begin with the author‚s impression of the mentioned poets and will continue to explain it. After a short historical background of the modern Persian poetry with respect to female poets, the author will focus on those characteristics of Simin‚s poetry that, in her opinion, lead her to be a „poet of people‰. She‚ll conclude that Simin, in her artistic progress as a poet, has moved from passionate love poems towards poetry enriched by a motherly affection for all humans; and as such, has approached the narrative as an appropriate form for her poetical expression.
