Thursday, 7 May 2009

Inspired by mythological women


Rosa Jamali


Rosa Jamali was born in November 1977. She studied Drama in the Art University of Tehran.Her first book ‘ This dead body is not an apple, it is either a cucumber or a pear’was published in 1997.Pretty soon there were quite a lot of reviews about the book in the literary magazines. She describes an absurd world in which words have lost their real meanings, they’re just objects jumbled in the world.


She breaks the syntax & there are quite a lot of word plays. The main theme of the book is the identity of objects & the objects are coming from a modern everyday life with all its necessities. Very soon the book with all its suggestions opens a new way in the creative Persian poetry.



Her second collection of poetry was published in the same year‘Making a face’. In this book you confront with a kind of ability in using different types of discourse, sometimes archaic sometimes colloquial, spoken, written, formal, informal, journal like, reporting, scientific & so. Her erotic poems & the challenge she describes boldly throughout poetry.


She has adapted a kind of music from classical Persian poetry & has tried to give it the natural tone of speaking. The way she narrates is the stream of consciousness. She tries to mingle the long sentences with the short phrases she makes. Her bitter sense of humour and the creative points she offers in the style makes her work distinctive.



During these years she writes a number of book reviews and critical articles and she explains her views throughout reviewing others poetry.Her third book of poetry came out in 2002.’Making Coffee To Run A Crime Story’. In this book there’s a long poem by this name, a long dramatic poem which comes across the most important Persian long story ‘Blind Owl’ by ‘Sadegh Hedayat’.


In 'Blind owl' the narrator of the story who is a man chops a woman to pieces and in this poem something opposite happens. The descriptions are the ones you see in crime fiction but here the narrator exists inside the story and the point of view changes every often. The words are so cruel and rough that you can’t believe a woman has written that.


In an Interview she says: ‘I’ve been inspired by mythologicla women and Greek tragedies as Medea who kills her children and sets the fire to burn, as Antigone who doesn’t know a place to bury her brother and in the history of Islam there’s a woman who’s called ‘Hendeye jegarxar’ who is a fame in cruelty who eats the fallen pieces of Prophet Mohammad’s uncle.


Also I’ve been inspired by crime fiction, but there’s a point you see in Greek tragedies a murder is a sacrifice and to release and for salvation but in a civilized society as Dostoyevsky describes in ‘Crime & punishment’ when Roskolnikov kills he falls to regret. In my poem I wanted to convey that old mythological significance.’



The poem has got a lot references to bible, myths & characters.In other poems of this book again you see the poet creates the atmosphere of a machinery life. In her recent poems she talks about death & love from a philosophical point of view as Omar Khayyam did so many years ago. A book named ‘ The sand glass which has fallen asleep…’



Her poems have been translated to English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, Dutch & Esperanto. In 2001 she has been a nominated guest in Asian & African study center in London although she couldn’t attend it and in September 2006 she has taken part in a cultural programme with Jana Beranova (Dutch poet) , in which her poems were translated to Dutch and Branova’s poems were translated to Persian.


The programme took place in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) . In this programme she has talked about her poems in English & answered to the questions of the Dutch audience present in the place. She has also translated selected poems of Yeats to Persian.



‘The shadow ‘ is a play by Rosa Jomali. The police is seeking for a murderer, a woman but he’s found eleven women look like the murderer. The setting is a room.There are two women in black, covered their hair in black headscarves confronting each other in a shelter.They were born on the same day and they’ve got one name.They both married a man called Parviz.



A challenge of identity let them kill each other. At the end a third woman exactly like them enters the same room, finding a piece of paper: ‘The police has arrested 13 women by that face, two were dead.’‘Here Gravity Is Less’, her selected poems is under print now.


Some of her poems


The Only resident of This house is a gloomy Hawk

I’m locked and my veins are running away

Coming from absurd memories


My gambled memory


Which is on sale now.

It was a man

Heavy


On my eyelids.

No, it won’t be over


All the mirrors show me the same


It’s a locked door


The stone is falling down


Deserted and barefoot


The day is just the surface!

That parted memory


The drizzle of salt


On that large basin.

The days are sick


You’ve taken my pulse


And me


Is a memory joined to your veins.

Tired


Although they’re playing the drums


As loudly as possible


I’m a deaf!

The only resident of this house is the gloomy hawk.


The Flintstone

BLOCK NO.1


They bargain a rough stone owing you


Not clear!


Is it the stone of fire


Or a flintstone?


BLOCK NO.2


A piece of my happiness owing the flintstone


You’ve turned to rocks owing the flintstone…


BLOCK NO.3


I’m in debt with the flintstone


BLOCK NO.4



It casts a spell


To desire


Behind the railings.


BLOCK NO.5


I’m the mother of this flintstone


I’ve nourished it


I’ve shed tears on it


If the world is on fire,


It’s my guilt.


BLOCK NO.6


I’ve betrayed the air


God is disabled by it.


BLOCK NO.7


You’ve taken the vow of silence?!


Unripe greengages


I’m unripe greengages


It was a necessity


That I was just born to be added as a flavour

Tehran on my lap


Tehran on my lap


At the agony of death


On my bosom


Is an aged bull


That’s roaring


Tamed and dull


Rubbing its figure on my hair.


Tomorrow,


It ‘ll be a dead body


And the dustman will collect it


I’m a refuge of this kicking bitch


And I’ll leave it to God,…


Suppose that I’m inevitable

Suppose that I’m inevitable


Even the veins of my right hand


Cross you from the drafts.

On my smooth nails


The breeze


Which is not from the sky


Is curving you


Either the veins of my right hand


Is running short


On my pulse.

Rolled along my fingers


Vanished


Not repeated for ever


For the second.


I’m a half


Since the first.

The veins of my neck cross you all.

If the warmth of my ten fingers


Seized on your torn pieces of breath


All is over


With the dead-end alleys


all in oblivion.

The Last Street of Teheran

At the airport


Now the upshot of my hands


Is this cramped land


It’s the size of the palms of my hands


Overlooks the slippery sunlight


And the sun is not on the speaking term with us,


The dream coming from the Lut desert is moving my fingers


The blowings stiffen my teeth


The whirlwind from the sandy desert


Is blowing our house.

Sticking the pieces of my face to make me laugh?

How can I skip over your hands?


Precisely like the way you predicted that


A huge grave


To put the longest night to sleep


The sleep has migrated from our eyelids


Has covered the river bank


Drenched,


Torn- up lips!

Sticking the pieces of my face to make me laugh?

With scissors,


They’re cutting something


Alphabet drooping on the soil


Vanished letters of our names


Had you forgotten them?


Through the zigzags,


Firm and stiff


In the middle of desert,


Spread


You’ve locked up my mother’s breath!


Her footprints vanishing on the sand…

Sticking the pieces of my face to make me laugh?


No! …


I won’t be back


I will not return to the last street of Tehran


I left a single shoe here


For you


To put on


And follow me!


The outline is shaping on the horizon


It’s the size of my hand


Skipping exceeds 3 feet


The precise size of my hand!

The Lut Desert is a desert in the South-east of Iran


Like a hanged pitcher



Like a hanged pitcher,


No drink is pouring off me


It’s natural to get numbed gradually.

Pig-headed seashells!


This boasting sky,


Is an anchor


which has fallen on my lap


This dizzy sky!


The moon’s been cleared


A shadow’s coming after me


Barefooted on my dreams


You used to run!

Enjoyed? !


Numbed? !

All my veins are connected to this land…

Like a hanged pitcher


Joyful of this sky


One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole.

And it was over!


The Gulf was over!


You waved hands.

Like a hanged pitcher,


It’s simple!


I lost the game


And gambled away…


The Bull Year


Mouse is a sharp vessel of me singing


The tigers are mute


The claws clinging on the snow gradually…

2


It was dark


Metal shape


And slippery on the ice


It was totally dark.

The creased moon walked on my shadow


I’ve buried the fish


The memory ’s hanged on the ceiling.

Keeps going


For centuries


Talks on a puppet


And mimes a gesture.

The avalanche


Broken latticed twigs


It was an origami


Went with the wind


And totally forgotten.

3


The glass coffin behind the window


Time is lingering on me


The shadow on the pot.

Shivering on the window…

I’ve buried yesterday


My fingers don’t move


They gripped the time.

No end for the clouds


The lines are totally dark


The mirror walked in me.

It’s chewed the buttons of my dress.

A flock of crows flying


The earth is a worn out corridor,

A mass of ants invaded my house


It’s been raining for seven hundred years


A blind’s coming


And this year is a bull year…

4


The rabbit coming from the left


Has made love with the white snow


It’s been in a bloody intercourse,


The rabbit coming from my veins.


The Clock Cell


Something dies accidentally


And the sunlight which has soaked is wet and obscure


If I continue the lines


The frozen object captured in your hands slips down


Otherwise the day has come to an end.

Vacant


When I get home


Standstill current of water


And the sunlight which is damp


On the blank sheets


I wept on my old garments.

The elements


Its origin has been painted by my blood


The rain of cats and dogs on my plantation


The moon is vast!

Here with my frostbite on the iron post,


I threw the time to the river


Time was a whim dropped from my hands


The moments have been cleared away…

The wall has turned blue


Me and the black gown


Have been spilt to the river.

It’s a calf death breast-fed.

What is it?


Sediments on a neutral background


It could be in a different colour


It’s been many days since I started walking on the rope


The creased moon is falling down the ceiling.

Blizzard


A flimsy stone


The frostbite on the window glass


The bridge has fallen down


Silence on a metal tape


Ending to a blind full stop.


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