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The Ashes Beneath Our Tongues: Between Tehran and Exile
Paperback
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ISBN13: 9798263431839
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 7 2025
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 7 2025
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This poetry collection brings together more than a decade of work, written across Iran and Europe, charting an arc from political struggle and imprisonment to exile and the ongoing labour of remembering. The poems are grounded in lived experience, addressing themes of social justice, women's rights, political resistance, and the endurance of individual and collective memory under repression.
Structured in distinct yet interconnected sequences, the collection moves through personal lyric, documentary fragments, and direct address. Early poems consider the atmosphere of protest and state violence in Iran, preserving moments of witness alongside intimate reflections on love, friendship, and loss. Subsequent sections carry the reader into the realities of imprisonment, including a sustained sequence written in and about Qarchak Women's Prison. These pieces record the physical environment, the isolation of quarantine wards, the presence of fellow detainees, and the unbroken will to speak.
Later sections engage with the condition of exile. Here, the poems shift between recollections of place-Tehran, Berlin, border crossings-and reflections on absence, dislocation, and the persistence of language as both anchor and means of survival. Throughout, images from Persian mythology, history, and scripture are recontextualised: ancient figures and narratives are woven into present-day experiences of oppression and resistance, creating a dialogue between past and present.
The language ranges from compressed, image-driven lines to prose-poems that catalogue events or memories. Recurrent motifs-water, blood, the body, the gaze-link individual pieces into a coherent whole. The voice remains direct, unsentimental, and attentive to the material realities of political struggle, while allowing space for moments of tenderness, intimacy, and hope.
Taken together, the collection stands as both a literary and historical record: a testament to resilience in the face of censorship, imprisonment, and forced displacement. It offers a sustained exploration of how personal and political experiences are intertwined, and how poetry can preserve and articulate the lives and struggles of those who are silenced or marginalised.
Later sections engage with the condition of exile. Here, the poems shift between recollections of place-Tehran, Berlin, border crossings-and reflections on absence, dislocation, and the persistence of language as both anchor and means of survival. Throughout, images from Persian mythology, history, and scripture are recontextualised: ancient figures and narratives are woven into present-day experiences of oppression and resistance, creating a dialogue between past and present.
The language ranges from compressed, image-driven lines to prose-poems that catalogue events or memories. Recurrent motifs-water, blood, the body, the gaze-link individual pieces into a coherent whole. The voice remains direct, unsentimental, and attentive to the material realities of political struggle, while allowing space for moments of tenderness, intimacy, and hope.
Taken together, the collection stands as both a literary and historical record: a testament to resilience in the face of censorship, imprisonment, and forced displacement. It offers a sustained exploration of how personal and political experiences are intertwined, and how poetry can preserve and articulate the lives and struggles of those who are silenced or marginalised.
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