Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry

The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran. Four decades after her tragic death at the age of 32, Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran brings her ground-breaking work into new focus. During her lifetime Farrokhzad embodied the vexed predicament of the contemporary Iranian woman, at once subjected to long-held traditional practices and influenced by newly introduced modern social sensibilities. Highlighting her literary and cinematic innovation, this volume examines the unique place Farrokhzad occupies in Iran, both among modern Persian poets in general and as an Iranian woman writer in particular. The authors also explore Farrokhzad’s appeal outside Iran in the Iranian diasporic imagination and through the numerous translations of her poetry into English. It is a fitting and authoritative tribute to the work of a remarkable woman which will introduce and explain her legacy for a 21st-century audience. This second edition includes three new chapters which explore contemporary poetry in relation to Forugh Farrokhzad’s work, the travelogue Farrokhzad wrote during her time in Italy, and the convergences and divergences in the 1960s in the retrospective approaches towards modernist Persian poetics of Forugh Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlu.