Like a Tree That Looks at Itself in Silence!

Sheida Mohammadi is a poet who presents a fresh face of her poetic language and intuition with her fourth poetry collection "Red Whispers." This new face is considerably thought-provoking with poems that are well-developed and crafted. Sheida Mohammadi has previously published three other poetry collections. I invited this California-based poet to be a guest on this program. But first, a poem from this collection: 'Here, from these geraniums, the storm came and took away all the paper flowers... Oh! My beloved, I was supposed to listen today to the sound of your eyes, to the warm voice of this soil and these happy palms... I was supposed to tell you about the people of Tabriz and domes, about irises and streets that do not twist into the future. Your hands were supposed to smell of jasmine and saffron, your shoulder was supposed to get drunk with beautiful dreams weaving my dress. The air had a beautiful essence. Oh! How much I wanted to sleep in the depth of your eyes! But these dark laughs of yours, these dark laughs of yours, these dark laughs of yours. Outside this flowerpot, nothing is serious; neither the fire in Malibu, nor the slogans on the walls of Kandahar, nor all these stinking corpses in Baghdad. Oh my beloved!... Ms. Mohammadi, welcome to the weekly program "Far View, Close View." Let’s start the conversation by noting that "Red Whispers" seems to be the culmination of all your sensory experiences regarding poetry, meaning we can say that the poet who started her work a few years ago with the collection "The Moonlight Opened Her Heart, Lady" has finally reached a secure point in her fourth poetry collection. Do you feel the same way about this collection? First, I thank you for your invitation. It is an honor and joy for me to be a guest on a program that is run by a professional literary team. It is also very difficult for Mehrdad Qasemfar to read and critique a book. Thank you for sharing your overall perspective on this collection and the journey of my works from "The Moonlight Opened Her Heart, Lady" to "Red Whispers." I think I can place "Red Whispers" in the confessional poetry genre, a genre that my two favorite American poets, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, are inclined towards; although they have always been against this view, I consider them confessional poets. Regarding the collection "Red Whispers," I must say it is one of my most personal poetic experiences, a collection that carries all those hidden words, hidden feelings, hidden love, even death, the desire for death, despair, and the life of a lonely woman or poet. The matter of language is one of the most important elements that separates poetry from pre-poetry, and its level and limits indicate the poet's precision and sometimes even the poet's achievement of poeticity. I believe that in this collection, compared to your previous works, there is greater attention to language and its purity; there is less redundancy in its language; the images are not free, and the imageries are not formed randomly. The audience understands that the poet of this collection is at a point of conscious understanding of language. How did you reach this point? Yes, perhaps this is the only collection among the previous ones where language has undergone a deeper and more internal journey for me. That is, my visual perspective and imagination in relation to the world and my surroundings in this collection were more of a return to the inner self and the result of whispers I had in my solitude. I think every time I returned to it, I wanted to reach that true 'me,' the one that does not occur in everyday conversations, work environments, gatherings of friends, or even with our beloved. I always felt the absence of this language in my mind and imagination, and that is why I wanted it to come forth in my poetry. Perhaps those experiences, as you mentioned, pre-poetic, also helped me to reach the language of this poetry each time I scribbled. Another characteristic of this collection is that the poems are more narrative in nature. The narrative element is very prominent. The poems tell stories. The lines seem to be separate lines from a longer story. Therefore, it even seems that they do not end within themselves. How do you view the relationship with the narrative? Do you have a narrative mindset? That is, when you review your poems, do you also feel the inclination towards storytelling? Yes. I think perhaps because all the poems are a kind of dialogue with that 'you' that is always hidden and absent, that 'you' that seems to never be there, and perhaps that is why "Red Whispers" narrates all the events, stories, wishes, regrets, and longings that occur in the absence of 'him' for 'him.' Although this poetry collection is now in front of me and continues to live outside of me, when I think about it, it seems to me that this book reflects my personal philosophy of existence, which is love and that desire that is never there. For me, as a contemporary human who has always faced that bitter experience of loneliness and confronting that existential anxiety, this absence and non-arrival of 'you' is so thick and strong that in all solitude and all those whispers and murmurs, it seems to narrate this story from eternity to eternity for that 'you.' You are right. For me, even my non-poetic life throughout the day, everything seems to remain unfinished and still yearns for liberation and ecstasy. Therefore, I think the poems are naturally born from the philosophy of not arriving, not becoming, and not coming, like the story of all of us humans, like many loves. All these poems are a kind of dialogue with that 'you' that is always hidden and absent, that 'you' that seems to never be there, and perhaps that is why "Red Whispers" narrates all the events, stories, wishes, regrets, and longings that occur in the absence of 'him' for 'him.' Let’s take a brief look at your previous poetry collection, "Instant Photo of Love Play," which was published underground in Tehran in 2007; the reason being that the poems occur in a realm that is essentially considered forbidden literature in Iran, and the Ministry of Culture even calls it obscene literature. This has been one of the ongoing tensions in literature in Iran, that is, the poet or writer's engagement with the erotic world, which is a significant part of their existence and their audience's existence. In the collection "Instant Photo of Love Play," you speak very freely and openly about your erotic feelings. Was this an intentional approach to confront that closed situation, or did it happen spontaneously? Well, I think no artist is as free in confronting themselves as a poet is, and there is a kind of unrestrainedness towards the world. Poetry has no etiquette or order for me. It has no obligation to undertake a mission or at the same time to have an explanation in protest against that dominant and repressive voice. That recklessness may have been born from my life at that time. Perhaps it was the Sheida of that day. Just as many may tell me that the eroticism of the poems in "Red Whispers" is more hidden. This is also my personal experience today. So that is why you did not repeat those experiences. That is, it was not part of your poetry, but belonged to that specific mental period or reaction to a specific situation. Well, of course, this coincided with the early years of my migration. Migration does not mean that I changed physically and socially. For me, the mirror is that death. We are in death that we are naked and unrestrained and free from all masks and pretenses. "Instant Photo of Love Play" was a kind of passage through that mirror for me. Perhaps I was still in the middle of it. In "Red Whispers," I think I have passed through this death. I have passed through this mirror. The eroticism in the language of "Red Whispers" or romantic abstentions is a kind of hidden language. But in "Instant Photo of Love Play," there is a woman who demands. There is a woman who perhaps in the absence of those epic poems draws her sword and seeks a challenger. Perhaps its appeal for me is the poet's audacity in a time when they were still in the cocoon of those bonds, judgments, and censorships, and even self-censorships; and there were not few. After this book, I faced many criticisms and stigmas from both sides, from the traditional, religious, and governmental society and also from the so-called intellectuals. But I am glad that it confronted me with my own death. Passing through myself was the hardest passage I have had in my life. I believe that even crossing geographical borders was easier for me than freeing myself from myself. In modern language, it could be called self-censorship. Of course, in my personal life, I cannot deny this. I was younger. My view of the world was a yearning, childlike, and unique perspective. Everything was fresh for me, every scent, every touch, every sound. Even the appeal and freshness of California's nature seemed to me like making love with a new world I was entering. I do not want to say that this freshness is no longer there. But if it can be said, maturity... maturity in the sense that it now passes through the filter of my mind, through the filter of my imagination and forces me to reflect. This reflection and pauses are what I have employed in the language of "Red Whispers." But in "Instant Photo of Love Play," the only thing that still makes me happy... perhaps... is the audacity? ... In a sense, yes! There is a constant question that perhaps cannot be overlooked in conversations with poets and writers who have experienced leaving Iran and at the same time cannot return to the country; it is the relationship between the creative act of writing and the significant event of migration or exile. How has this been for you, and what impact has it had on your poetry? If I want to refer to a good and credible reference, which is your own statements about my evolution in my books, I think according to what Mehrdad Qasemfar, one of the strict critics, has said, this evolution has been an upward journey. Many of our artists and coincidentally artists living in Iran have always driven us with this stick that those who are far from their soil can no longer create and no longer have that fertility, and their work declines. There may be exceptions. But I think even in a general view of migration literature, I have seen and read many brilliant works that I can even say are better than the collections published inside Iran that reach me. As I mentioned in your previous question about "Instant Photo of Love Play," I did not just confine myself to my new environmental experience. That is, the experience of the geographical and historical environment of a new language. This made me take an analytical inner look at myself, my past, my identity, and my poetic nature. Whether I am a poet at all? I am. If I am, where can my femininity, my poetic nature, my Iranian identity in this newly found land, which perhaps has also been a kind of choice, fit in this world? These were questions I had with myself from day one. This is not something that happened overnight. Perhaps it was never consciously. In yoga, there is a movement where you have to stand and place your chin under your neck and look at yourself; then close your eyes and reflect. In this state and moment, I have always felt that I am at the height of a mountain, like a tree that has grown up there. Whenever I face this question, I see myself as a lone tree standing on that mountain, looking at itself in that silence and the sound of the wind and the scent of eucalyptus and pine trees.