Forough farrokhzad biography templates

Forugh Farrokhzad فروغ فرخزاد

(December 29, 1934 – February 13, 1967) was an influential Iranian poet and film director. She was a controversial modernist poet and an iconoclast, writing from a female point of view.

Biography

Forugh (also spelled Forough) was born in Tehran to career military officer Colonel Mohammad Bagher Farrokhzad (originally from Tafresh city) and his wife Touran Vaziri-Tabar in 1935. The third of seven children (Amir, Massoud, Mehrdad, Fereydoun Farrokhzad, Pooran Farrokhzad, Gloria), she attended school until the ninth grade, then was taught painting and sewing at a girls’ school for the manual arts. At age sixteen she was married to Parviz Shapour, a satirist. Farrokhzad continued her education with classes in painting and sewing and moved with her husband to Ahvaz. A year later, she bore her only child, a son named Kamyar Shapour (subject of A Poem for You).

Within two years, in 1954, Farrokhzad and her husband divorced; Parviz won custody of the child. She moved back to Tehran to write poetry and published her first volume, entitled The Captive, in 1955.

Farrokhzad, a female divorcée writing controversial poetry with a strong feminine voice, became the focus of much negative attention and open disapproval. In 1958 she spent nine months in Europe. After returning to Iran, in search of a job she met film-maker and writer Ebrahim Golestan, who reinforced her own inclinations to express herself and live independently. She published two more volumes, The Wall and The Rebellion before traveling to Tabriz to make a film about Iranians affected by leprosy. This 1962 documentary film titled The House is Black won several international awards. During the twelve days of shooting, she became attached to Hossein Mansouri, the child of two lepers. She adopted the boy and brought him to live at her mother’s house.

In 1964 she published Another Birth. Her poetry at that time varied significantly from previous Iranian poe

Forough Farrokhzad is undoubtedly one of the most prominent among the Iranian woman poets in the history of Persian literature. Her significant achievements in poetry and film production during her relatively short life and her unexpected death have made her an enigmatic and almost legendary person. Her avant-garde poems were both praised and criticized during her life. Half a century after her death, she is still one of the most read and acclaimed Iranian poets; as well as continuing to be one of the most controversial people in Persian literature.

When thinking about Forough Farrokhzad, one is always faced with the question: “What makes her so enigmatic and legendary?” Is it because of her powerful poems? Well, she was not the only Iranian poet who wrote good poems. Is it because of her activities in film production? But she was not the only Iranian filmmaker who gained international praise. Or is it because of her independent life as a female intellectual in a male-dominated society that has made her a role model for different generations of Iranian women? This essay aims to give a summary of Forough Farrokhzad’s life and works and to shed light on some critical issues in her life that are of interest and importance for both Iranian and international readers.

“I do not know what arriving is,
but without a doubt, there is a destination
towards which my whole being flows.”

-Forough Farrokhzad

Forough Farrokhzad’s Early Life

Forough-Ozzaman Farrokhzad, the 3 of 7 children of Mohammad Farrokhzad, an army officer, and Batul Vaziry-Tabar, a housewife, was born on December 28, 1934[1] in Tehran. Although they were considered a well-to-do family, Forough’s father as a person with military background raised his children according to military disciplines; the children were treated harshly, and they had to work from early ad

Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967)

“If my poems, as you say, have an aspect of femininity, it is of course quite natural. After all, fortunately, I am a woman. But if you speak of artistic merits, I think gender cannot play a role. In fact to even voice such a suggestion is unethical. It is natural that a woman, because of her physical, emotional, and spiritual inclinations, may give certain issues greater attention, issues that men may not normally address. I believe that if those who choose art to express their inner self, feel they have to do so with their gender in mind, they would never progress in their art — and that is not right. So when I write, if I keep thinking, oh I’m a woman and I must address feminine issues rather than human issues, then that is a kind of stopping and self-destruction. Because what matters, is to cultivate and nourish one’s own positive characteristics until one reaches a level worthy of being a human. What is important is the work produced by a human being and not one labelled as a man or a woman. When a poem reaches a certain level of maturation, it separates itself from its creator and connects to a world where it is valid based on its own merits.”[10][11] Emphasizing human issues, she also calls for a recognition of women’s abilities that goes beyond the traditional binary oppositions …” Forough Farrokhzad (from an interview)

I am delighted and honored to say that tonight we have a guest blogger who sent to Wompo (a list for and about women’s poetry) and now has given me permission to put here an (in effect) foremother poet posting.

By Farideh Hassanzadeh.. For her poetry and more about her: she is also a translator and freelance journalist. On Poem Hunter

Farideh began with one of Farrokhzad’s poems (in translation)

It is Only Sound That Remains

Why should I stop, why?
the birds have gone in search
of the blue direction.
the horizon is vertical, vertical
an

Major Iranian poet who was an early feminist and one of her country's first important female writers. Name variations: Farrough, Foroogh, Furogh, or Furugh Farrukhzad or Farrokhzaad or Farrokhzād. Pronunciation: Four-UGH Farroch-ZHAHD. Born Forugh Farrokhzad in Tehran, Iran, on January 5, 1935; died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident in Tehran, on February 14, 1967; daughter of Mohammed Farrokhzad (a colonel in the Iranian Army) and Turan Vaziri Tabar Farrokhzad; attended a coeducational secondary school and a girls' high school as far as the ninth grade in Tehran; attended the Kamalolmolk Technical School; married Parviz Shapur, in 1951 (divorced 1954); children: one son.

First poems published in Tehran newspapers and magazines (1953); had nervous breakdown (1954); had love affair with Nader Naderpur (1954–56); made first trip abroad (1956); became assistant atEbrahim Golestan's film studio and began love affair with Golestan (1958); went to England to study film production (1959); began work as documentary filmmaker (1960); completed documentary film on Iranian lepers (1962); acted in stage production of Six Characters in Search of an Author (1963); was the subject of UNESCO film (1965).

Selected works:

The Captive (1955); The Wall (1956); Rebellion (1958); Another Birth (1964); Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (1974).

Forugh Farrokhzad was a prominent Iranian poet and filmmaker during the middle decades of the 20th century. Dying young, she produced only 127 poems, presented to the public in five collections, plus a small number of verses that appeared in various Iranian magazines. Nonetheless, many critics believe she is the greatest female poet in the history of the Persian language and one of the luminaries of Persian literature. In the modern Iranian tradition, her readers often refer to her by her first name alone.

Farrokhzad rebelled against the strictures of her con