Ahmad Shamlou احمد شاملو (December 12, 1925 – July 23, 2000) who also wrote under the pen name “Alef Bamdad” is considered one of the most influential Iranian poets and cultural figures of the twentieth century. Also a writer, translator, encyclopedist, and critic, he synthesized international aesthetics and ideas with Iranian traditions and practices to foment a modernist revolution in Iranian poetics. His work updated poetry in form and content and helped cement its transition from classical and metric poetry to free verse, forging new language for a bold new century. A socially conscious poet and an outspoken critic of autocracy, Shamlou’s work was often subjected to censorship and he was imprisoned twice during the Pahlavi reign. His body of work spans over seventy books and counting. Shamlou was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984.

These English translations of Ahmad Shamlou’s poetry — praised as “superb,” “marvelous,” and “expert” — are published in Self-Portrait in Bloom (2019), a hybrid memoir by award-winning translator Niloufar Talebi that reimagines the form and presents a portrait of Shamlou’s life and work along with translations of his poems, selected letters, and other material. Talebi came of age after the 1979 Iranian Revolution around Shamlou who visited her parents’ literary salons in Tehran. Talebi also created the opera Abraham in Flames (2019, composer Aleksandra Vrebalov), partly inspired by Shamlou’s seminal 1974 book of poems, Abraham in Flames, about the unshakeable resolve of standing by one’s convictions regardless of the risk and repercussions. 

Ahmad Shamlou’s towering legacy continues to build. The two poems we present on the twenty-second anniversary of his passing reflect Shamlou’s world-class voice and commitment to humanity.