Forugh Farrokhzad: Conquering the Garden

Iran Heritage Foundation in collaboration with British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS).

Forugh Farrokhzad’s reputation as a path-breaking female rebel made her an iconic figure of her time. Both her unconventional personal life and her captivating creative trajectory have captured the imagination of generations of Iranians since she published her first poems in the mid-1950s. More than four decades after her death at the age of 32, Farrokhzad has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in modern Iran, and an-depth study of her poetry is pivotal to the understanding of Persian literary modernity and the rise of women’s writing in Iran in the twentieth century. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw uses an exploration of the metaphor of the garden in Farrokhzad’s poetry as a window on the evolution of her views on love and the predicament of the Iranian nation.

Dr Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Lecturer in Persian Studies and Iranian Literature at the University of Manchester. He has also held positions at McGill University, Montreal, and the University of Oxford. Dominic Parviz Brookshaw has published widely on modern and medieval Persian poetry. His most recent publication in this field is (edited with Nasrin Rahimieh), Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (I B Tauris, 2010). His monograph, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: A Study of Fourteenth-century Persian Love Poetry will be published shortly by I B Tauris.

Lecture: 6:30–7:30 pm
Reception: 7:30-8:30 pm

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