Forough Farrokhzad
Modernist Iranian poet and filmmaker, one of the most influential female voices in modern Persian poetry (1934–1967).
Read in context →At a glance
- Field
- modern poetry and filmmaking
- Key work
- the poetry collection 'Another Birth' (1964)
- Film
- the documentary 'The House Is Black' (1962)
- Death
- 1967, car accident at age 32
Biography
Forough Farrokhzad (1934–1967) was a poet and filmmaker who, with a frank and bold female voice in expressing emotion, the body, and individual desire, found a singular place in modern Persian poetry. Her early collections — 'The Captive,' 'The Wall,' and 'Rebellion' — were scandalous in a traditional society, but with 'Another Birth' (1964) and the posthumous 'Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season' she reached maturity and a deep, innovative idiom. In cinema she created the enduring, acclaimed short documentary 'The House Is Black' (1962) about a leper colony. Forough died in a car accident in Tehran in the winter of 1967, at the age of thirty-two. A notable nuance is that her persona and poetry have always been a field of contested interpretation: some read her above all as a symbol of women's liberation and the breaking of taboos, while others stress that this label can overshadow the purely literary and aesthetic value of her work.
Quotes & narrations
«It is only the voice that remains.»
Related entities
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Farroḵzād, Forūḡ-Zamān"
- Michael Hillmann, A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry (1987)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Forugh Farrokhzad"