For women. For life. For freedom
Hearing this, pains my heart
It used to pump new blood in my veins
What happened to my hope?
I guess they killed it
When they put an ugly grey scarf on my head on the 1st day of school
I guess they killed it
When they took my pink backpack because it was pink
I guess they killed it
When they took me out of the singing group in school
Because of my dad who was a modern leftist
I guess they killed it
When I was sixteen
and they took us to jail for being in a house party
I guess they killed it
When they said in court
“You girls can dance naked in front of your future husbands
based on the damn “The Satanic Verses”1 but can’t party with your
male friends”
I guess they killed it
When Khatami2 was about to get elected
And I cried 8 hours to get my hopeless parents to vote
And everything got even worse when he got power
I guess they killed it
When my dad had to revise words like “Wine” or “Hair” in his
translations to be published
I guess they killed it
When they started killing the writers again
I guess they killed it
When literary magazines got closed one after the other
I guess they killed it
When my mom said with a painful smile on her hopeful face
“They say the scarf is not our issue, we have bigger issues, ok”
I guess they killed it
When I got fed up and decided to leave
I guess they killed it
When I heard comments like
“Didn’t we tell you nothing will change when you were 18 and
you wanted to fight, now 9 years later, you left?”
I guess they killed it
When the poets only wrote of blood and tears
I guess they killed it
When on route to Ottawa they announced the new president before
we even voted
I guess they killed it
When CNN, BBC and all the others stopped broadcasting the Green
Movement of 883 and
only showed MJ’s death
I guess they killed it
When I read more history books
I guess they killed it
When I realized nothing will change unless the fucking 1% decides it
needs a change
I guess they killed it
When the middle class in Iran got vanished
I guess they killed it
When even in my 40s I can’t go watch a football match in Iran
I guess they killed it
When the disgusting government people came to Canada with money
And are walking freely
I guess they killed it
When people still judge their friends for their way of protesting
I guess they killed it
When even in the USA women’s rights keep going backwards
I guess they killed it
When I saw my fellow Iranians support Trump in hopes of change for
Iran
I guess they killed it
When flight #7524 happened
And we could’ve been in it if last minute hadn’t changed our flight
from the 8th to the 6th of January
I guess they killed it
When Trudeau couldn’t do anything for those Iranian Canadians who
got murdered mid-air
I guess they killed it
When my favourite Iranian sports TV show got cancelled and they
made Ferdowsipoor5 disappear
I guess they killed it
When my dad spoke less and less
I guess they killed it
When I felt fear walking the streets of Tehran
I guess they killed it
When not only religion is not dead but has expanded to the Yonge
Street
I guess they killed it
When they beat Mahsa6 to death
I guess they killed it
When the human race showed brutality is the new humanity
I guess they killed it
When they don’t care about us
Not just them but “they” in the world
I guess they killed it
When they keep murdering my sisters
Maybe my younger sisters can bring my hope back
Keep fighting.
Notes
1. “The Satanic Verses”: W 1. hat Salmon Rushdie calls the Quran.
2. Khatami: Iranian politician who served as the fifth president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005.
3. Green Movement of 88: A major event in Iran’s modern political history, and observers claimed that these protests were the largest since the Iranian Revolution of 1978 to 1979. While the protests started out as a peaceful, non-violent movement, people were arrested and killed as protests turned more violent in the following months. The movement eventually had trouble retaining its momentum.
4. #752: A scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard.
5. Ferdowsipoor: An Iranian journalist, football commentator, translator, university professor, and television show host and producer. He was the host and producer of the popular TV show Navad.
6. Mahsa: Mahsa Amini, a 22–year-old woman beaten to death by Tehran Authorities named “morality police.”
Tannaz Taghizadeh, born in Tehran, Iran, comes from a literary family. Her poems appear in LRC, Grain Magazine, Event Magazine, and Plenitude Magazine.
Questions and Answers
Is there a specific moment that inspired you to pursue poetry?
I had to write an essay for a class I took at Ryerson on modern literature, and several sections of my writing came out rather poetic than academic. My professor loved my essay and his encouragement gave me the inspiration to start writing poetry.
How/where do you find inspiration today?
The inspiration is there, in the soft-boiled egg you might have for breakfast, in the horrifying news everywhere in the world, in a poetry night you make yourself go to, in a vintage vinyl store you visit. The challenge is to not let the moment pass and write it down.
Do you use any resources that a young poet would find useful (e.g. books, films, art, websites, etc.)?
I have been lucky to be a part of a poetry group in the past ten years on and off. They’re the best Monday evenings of my life: hearing everyone’s poems, and discussing poetry on a Monday took me on a journey I would never trade with anything. Human interaction still is a profound resource as through it you hear about others’ adventures, what films they like, what books they are reading, what art shows in the world they attended.
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
To be exposed to poetry, all the time. I’ve been surrounded by Poetry since childhood. My brilliant father who was a writer and translator used to read his favourite poems for me — he translated and published hundreds of poems to Farsi and introduced international poets to me and other poetry lovers in Iran. Reading poetry and listening to it is like listening to music, it heals your soul.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
During the first weeks of the #womenlifefreedom protests in Iran that started with the murder of a young girl, Mahsa Amini, the brave young generation of women were protesting in the streets of all the cities in Iran and all we could do outside of Iran was to watch the news, the social media feeds and shed tears. The barbaric government was arresting everyone who supports the protest in any way, and a song went viral by Shervin Hajipour called “Baraye,” talking about the pain my people are going through. One morning, I had this song on replay, and by the third time, I picked up my iPad and started writing, verse by verse.
How did your writing process unfold around this poem? How did you write, edit, and refine it?
My father always used to say there are two groups of poets, the ones who get inspired in a second and write the poem down and the ones who sit and put effort into writing the poem line by line. I am in the first group, I usually write a poem in five minutes but I have learned to force myself to go through the editing process and, like cooking, taste it, add ingredients to it, and add more spice if needed.
What did you find particularly challenging in writing this poem?
This is the longest poem I have ever written, my challenge was, in this busy world, would people take the time to read it if it is more than a page? Turns out some did!
Bear, The backyard and Summer thoughts
The intruder is coming
In exactly 13 days
She likes neither onions nor garlic, what do I cook then? boring vegetables?
The neighbor is upset about something
She gave me a look
“oh lord, keep him safe from harm!” she heard herself saying, she had not prayed in years,
The intruder will stay a month or two
I’m supposed to host, with a smile of course
The neighbor didn’t even say happy birthday
“she wondered if he like herself visualized transformations waking every morning expecting to be a prince, disappointed still to be a bear. She doubted that.”
The intruder has short black hair
8 years younger than me
If the bear can be a lover
Maybe the intruder can be a confidante
*Bear and the bold lines from Marian Engel’s Book “Bear”
27 club or a nobody
“The 70s of course “
His question was “which era would you want to have lived your 20s in “?
The era of rock & blues
The ear of free speech
The era of Psychedelic drugs
The era of poetry in music
The era of fighting for beliefs
My question to myself was
Would I become a member of the 27 club? or
become a member of the socialist party?
would I become a nobody like Emily Dickinson? or
just a nobody just the way I am now.
The love scene
Sundays 7 pm the new ritual
This week: lemon poppy seed loaf
Baking is scary, isn’t it?
You are free in cooking
The recipe says one chopped scallion
You feel like chopping two and the dish will have even more flavor
Our lovely instructor assured me
“No, it is not that strict,
Ingredients really just have to be united.”
It is a love scene
The egg yolks drown in the whites
The flour makes love with the eggs
The baking powder kisses the light mixture
The milk runs through it
The sour cream brings more texture like a tight hug
The lemon zest adds magic
The poppy seeds splashes on all of them
Fluffy
Lemony
Sweet
it’s a sane thing
going through the MRI tube
was like diving in to a sea of whiskey
the thoughts were vanishing
CBC celebrity getting fired, will Olivia win? 30% risk of cancer, how to make Christmas turkey by Gordon
swimming to the bottom and don’t know if i want to come up
whiskey and beers they don’t make me drunk
“these blues are gonna make me pack my trunk”
the loud noise is changing to Willie songs
from Hugh’s room
where we fell in love over blues and scotch
from me it happened in fall
and is still
thank you, it is done, results in 10 to 15 days
can i stay in the tube?
please.
Today kind of poetry
words are not kind today
they rather walk around the Charlotte Maher Park
the kitchen is calling though
fifteen minutes after
my wild mushrooms are swimming in butter
my Chicken is bathing in yogurt and saffron
the tall white rice are taking a dip in the salt water
the shallots are tanning
sipping on my wine
praising the hidden poetry in cooking
Unedited me
Not a pretty structure
No beautiful content
Ruthless
Lots of typos
Lots of mean adverbs
Repetitive form
Contrasting voices
Yelling in Farsi
Shouting in English
Not pragmatic
Just dark
Stuffy, complex not like-me words
Redundant
Maddening
Screaming in capitals
Calling people that not who
No clarity no style
Not proofread of course
You don’t like this version, do you?
It is not printable
But loves you