One of the interesting Iranians I have met is Nahid Kabiri.  Nahid is a close friend of my wife and we met when she lived in Atlanta for several years.  She currently lives in Tehran.  The following article appeared in the english daily IRAN NEWS on July 14, 1998.

Graduated in the field of sociology from Tehran University, Nahid Kabiri has been in love with story writing, poetry and acting from an early age, and she used to rehearse the fates of the heroes of her stories in her privacy.

Her first collection of poems titled Yalda was published in 1973.  Then Kabiri published four books of poetry, Moments in the Wind, Sunsets, Autumnal Aspirations, and In Praise of the Sun, which appeared in 1994.

Married to Sirus Ebrahimzadeh, the well known career artist and theater director, Kabiri is also a choreographer in the theater and her poetry has been set to music in plays and films. She is also an instructor of Yoga.

Commenting on Kabiri's poetry, Kazem Karimian, a poet and critic, says: "Kabiri writes about her personal experience and the beauty of nature.  Her poems strike like an original symphony whose melody seems to echo from distant shores in a manner that one feels the sense instead of the words in the print. Her relation with words is so intimate and unaffected that the reader seems to invade the poet's privacy by concentrating on the subtleties of her art.

In her new outlook toward the latent desires, which are the fountain of vitality and meaningful human relationships as well as man's relation with nature, the poet seems to convey her impressions like whispering Zephyr. Her beautiful combinations, her penetrating diction and her tender feelings are reflected in a simple format without undue sophistry as if each word was a butterfly and the flock of the butterflies formed a delightful rainbow... Then the murmur of the rill gives you peace and garlands of crimson anemones instill a new warmth and dynamism into your life."

In My Blue Imagination In my blue imagination to meet you, I cross the river, and dry my wet tresses on the red hills with the warmth of anemone. The look of the moon, follows my steps, with two twin stars in my pockets and a small bird which in the summer of my chest                 has nested. Did you come from the winds that you left with the winds...? I am a dweller of storm and with you to the end of the border of depression                 I shall sink.

A mature Kabiri has distanced herself from the faint shadow of Ahmad Shamloo and Forugh Farrokhzad who were her original models, and she now writes in an independent style. In poetry she zooms on modern social and humanitarian issues. Her poetry is simple, flowing and intimate and the poet has freed herself from conventional mechanics and artifices of modern poetry. Her message is candid and to the point and thanks to her keen feminine sense, her lines are charming and convincing.

Asked why she loved poetry, Kabiri said: "Your questions reminds me of other questions for which I seek answers, including why I am living? My life is intermixed with poetry. For many years I have felt the tumult of life and poetical melodies in my breath like the warmth of the brilliant sun ray on the frozen skin or the bitterness of pain in dark moments of repeated deaths when I have lived with poetry, wept with poetry and drunk its sweetness and sting.

"When I feel the need to speak, when motives dawn in me in surprising intervals, poetry comes to me and helps me to pour out my mental and visual observations on life. Kindled with the flame for a while I feel emancipated from my flesh and in such moments my soul is linked to the eternal golden dreams which is the music of creation. My motives for poetry are the heartbeats of life and without poetry I feel a prisoner gasping for air in the jail." Kabiri's forthcoming collection of poems, Scattered Joys, is to be published with an English translation.

The Man Who Descended from the Rain Why are you watching the stars? The message of a thousand-year old garden will not reach the flying spring. The sky is far more distant than you deem. The poor mulberry tree has suffered and suffers so much thirst that all its existence has dropped     drop         by drop             on the arid soil; And now its dead trunk, is the resort of shameless ants and bees. Among the moss I lost the memory of a man who descended from the rain In a wandering silent stream, in the same way I lose myself in a crowded and bright street. I carried the dream of a man who descended from the rain, every evening with cigarettes, bread and some grapes         into my house and behind closed windows I used to question him: "Say, what is the news?": But the dream of the man who descended from the rain never knew that he cheered me... In the crossroads of noise and lie and baseness, I screamed: "Oh..,     are we living or dead?" And I transferred the coldness of my hands into my empty pockets. In the street there was nobody to whom I could deliver my grief of loneliness...