The Poetry of Ziba Karbassi
Jennifer Langer

Ziba Karbassi originates from Tabriz, an Iranian town imbued with mystical poetic traditions where the Sufi mystic, Shams-e Tabriz had a major influence on Mowlana(Rumi)in an encounter in 1244. Ziba too, is a poet who aims to achieve sublimity through a concentration on breathing which leads her to a new consciousness and awareness. She asserts that living words need this elixir to make the words metamorphose. Ziba’s work has inspired and influenced Iranian poets in terms of language and form and Ziba herself, has been the subject of many poems. A

I sense that Ziba’s poetry is the result of profound inner experiences and imagined dimensions that involve the negotiation of the relationship between the poet’s imagination and her poetics. Reading her poetry is an inherently emotional experience because her work is not purely representational but, in a sense, transcends time and space. The metaphor of the fish appears in several of her poems, the fish equating to the ultimate meaning of life and the soul. B

Although the hegemony of pain and anger in relation to the fate of the Iranian people, particularly women, is evident, her poetry is never didactic or morose. She subverts traditional demands for silence about the female body and the physical and emotional aspects of love although in Iranian culture it is expected that women will avoid self-revelation and self-referentiality as it is considered transgressive to unveil the private. For this reason she is considered dangerous by various groups and individuals and has received many threats despite being in exile. In this sense, she follows in the footsteps of the great female poet, Farough Farrokhzad, considered dangerous for contesting the accepted order. C

Lemon is the surprising metaphor ascribed to love in her poem ‘Love is Lemony’; the astringent, sour, acid lemon which hides behind the soft stereotypical pink transformed to orange through an emotional and physical relationship. Naked shoulders are described as the square houses children draw while bodies coil around each other like vines. ‘Gravequake’ is a powerful poem causing the reader to empathise with the woman forced into prostitution through poverty and to feel fury against the men exploiting her body. The poet is an angry, external voice addressing the male client accusing him of treating the woman as an object ‘She’s not a willow to tremble!’ She is not portrayed as a victim but as a powerful person to be feared by her male clients because ‘she has swallowed fear’ and is in control. Other contradictions are represented here which reveal the reality of life – love-making on graves, the Haji who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, paying for sex, the woman reciting the Koran and the ‘happy grave’. The metaphor of the black crows is reminiscent of an image by Shirin Neshat, the exiled Iranian film-maker, of rows of women in black hejabs looking exactly like black crows, threatening and waiting to devour their prey: ‘Tell your black crows Tell your black crows/ Caw Caw/ The song of the nightingale is not up for sale.’ These are the women who perpetuate the system and punish those who upset the status quo. D

The poem ‘Death by Stoning’, written thirteen years ago, was the first poem on this subject. It is almost unbearable to read because of the sense of shock, revulsion and sadness it evokes through the detail and emotion described by the victim’s mother. This poem is not a polemic but is a powerful call to somehow stop this atrocity still perpetrated against women. Ziba’s pain for the people of Iran is represented in the poem ‘Revolution’ by the imagery of stars. ‘The people’s back was wounded/so their sky would rain stars’ implying that the revolution was conveyed to the people as a miraculous transformative event but in fact led to the suffering of society: ‘The earth filled with bloodied stars’. This use of imagery and metaphor is wonderfully creative and so this poem becomes an allegory.E

Ziba has been a poet since an early age when she learnt at the feet of a great poet in Tabriz. Her life has not been easy and I wept when she described her past to me. She was separated from her mother as a child and under Iranian law stayed with her father in Tabriz. Unhappy living with her father’s new family and having to speak Farsi instead of Azeri, her mother tongue, she was brought up mainly by her grandmother. Her mother’s new husband was taken away never to be seen again. Once when Ziba visited her mother in Tehran, she learnt that she and her new sisters were to flee to England as her mother’s life was in danger and she would not leave without the daughter from whom she had been separated. Ziba was heartbroken to leave her grandmothers whom she was never to see again. She is aware of the binaries of pain and joy and writes ‘traumas I brought/snake bile I brought’ but also ‘craziness I brought/light I brought.’ Ziba does not describe her personal pain but perhaps does so vicariously by writing poetry of the emotions enabling her to enter and create a new consciousness. F

Ziba’s poetry is translated from Farsi by Ziba Karbassi, Nilofar Talebi and Stephen Watts. G

.

.

.

.

.

.

Gravequake
Translated by Nilofar Talebi

The song of the nightingale

.Is not up for sale

Tell your black crows Tell your black crows

Caw Caw

.The song of the nightingale Is not up for sale

And it’s is not a willow that trembles

.It’s the frail figure of a woman

!She’s not a willow to tremble

!You, tremble

It’s a woman on your grave

Who sleeps under you

,Takes money and recites the Koran

In the name of Allah

Slap cold whip money

Weeping insults ha! ha! money

Skin kiss fur coat mane money

Rouge pallor dignity money

...Buys eats buys eats eats eats buys

?What! Graveyard? Fear? Are you kidding? You’re kidding, right

A woman with rosy cheeks and breasts

Tears the white prayer veil off her head

Spreads it on your grave

.And you do her

Her thin body trembling

.Her skinny arms and thighs trembling

!She’s not a willow to tremble

!You, tremble

She has swallowed fear She’ll swallow you too

!Fear! You

!Fear

,Down below there, up on top there

!You little man

This woman is to be feared

*Even dead, she is to be feared Hajji

.Even dead

,Happy grave

Hajji

!Happy grave

.

____________

.
*A Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).O

:Source
EXILED INK MAGAZINE - London