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| Leila Sehat in conversation with Farank Farid. |
Leila Sehat - Saturday, March 1, 2008
هانسی آنا دوغدوغون بوغار؟
آما من بوغدوم
دوغدوغوم دیلی!
“Which mother would drown what she herself gave birth to?
But I have drowned the language I was born into!”
I first encountered her in the university library while reading the Turkish translation of one of her poems originally written in English. Though I no longer remember any of the poem’s exact words, I still remember how close, warm, and fluid they felt that day. Even after many years, Farank Farid remains familiar to me through that same sweet memory of her poetry.
Farank Farid—poet and translator of English literature, born in 1961 in Tabriz, activist in women’s rights, editor of women’s issues in the now-banned monthly magazine Dilmaj, winner of the first Northwestern Press Festival in the Turkish poetry category, among other distinctions—this is the usual brief introduction to her. But when you sit down with her and let her speak for herself…
How does Farank like to talk about herself and her poetry?
It’s better if I begin with the second part of your question—the second part of myself! Because answering the first part is a bit difficult.
This question takes me back to the mid-1980s, to a time when I still wasn’t writing poetry. During those years in Tabriz—and probably elsewhere too—some families organized gatherings with music, dancing, poetry, literature, and, if I want to summarize it, spaces full of art, joy, and vitality. These gatherings continued beautifully for ten to fifteen years.
These homes were called ojagh (“hearths”), and under the circumstances of those years they were a blessing. They were like small cultural centers with programs enjoyable for everyone—young and old, women and men alike. In fact, many later cultural activities in our region were first born in these hearths. That’s where I also began, reading bayatis (Turkish couplets) and similar forms.
At first, I couldn’t read well. But little by little I learned, and later I wrote in that style myself. It was around 1994 that I began taking poetry more seriously. I also wrote Persian poetry with feminine themes. But my poetry truly continued in my mother tongue.
Why?
I think one reason is the immediacy of one’s mother tongue. You can express your feelings, emotions, and knowledge without needing to translate in your mind.
Another reason is my love for words. I see them as living beings entrusted to us. We can either breathe new life into them or leave them to be forgotten. Words convey far more meaning than what appears on the surface.
When these words belong to your mother tongue, they become something fluid and accessible—you can reach them directly. Your feelings do not become secondhand.
Another factor was the untapped nature of my mother tongue as a field of exploration—a vast space for experimentation. It felt like discovering a treasure, something precious inherited without knowing it existed.
And in a way, those words were also unfamiliar. You use them without fully knowing their precise meanings. You struggle to write them and sometimes even pronounce them correctly, because no one ever taught you how to read or write them. You have to begin everything from scratch.
I also think social conditions play a major role in shaping a poet. Conditions that force you to react and express yourself when other paths of expression are closed. Being a woman, and all the things that are broken down and synthesized within you…
Tell us about the feminine dimension of your poetry, which seems to be a dominant aspect.
Being a woman, your hidden or suppressed emotions, and everything you have experienced and continue to face as a woman…
Some of these things naturally overflow into poetry. For example, writing about cherries you turned into earrings when you were a little girl. In our yard we had a large cherry tree with big, dark cherries. I have that childhood memory, and it found its way into my poetry.
Other experiences arise from my sensitivity to the discrimination women face, and naturally these appear in my poetry as well.
But as Virginia Woolf says, if what we women write comes directly from anger, hatred, fear, dissatisfaction, or a desire to accuse the world, then we move somewhat away from literature. Our writing risks becoming mere complaint or self-centered expression.
Literature exposes anything artificial or anything that enters without artistic mediation—it shows like a patchwork repair.
This happens in women’s writing too. These are exercises so that later, we ourselves—or future generations of women—can write more honestly, naturally, and literarily about our inner desires and our womanhood.
Poetry is often linked to delicate and liberated emotional experience. What troubles you as a poet?
Poetry emerges so naturally that sometimes you don’t even have the chance to write it down. But after it is written, it needs readers.
When you see that many people who share your language have become so alienated from it that they can no longer understand it, that is deeply discouraging.
It is painful to see children whose parents speak to them from birth in a language other than their mother tongue. Whatever the reason may be, the result is that these children lose the opportunity to learn a language they could have acquired in the easiest possible way—an opportunity that usually comes only once in life.
It is a great blessing for a child to be exposed to two or three languages, and because of mistaken perspectives, we take this precious opportunity away.
The direct result of such decisions is that the mother tongue loses value in the child’s mind. The child feels the second language carries greater worth, because it is the language their parents chose to give them—and parents always want the best for their children.
A mother’s language, like her milk, comes from her body and soul. Perhaps the difference is like drinking milk from a bottle versus nursing directly from the mother.
These children become distanced from language, literature, folklore, stories, myths—in short, from their culture and their past.
The older generations are also constantly translating their inner thoughts, and in many cases they cannot fully connect with the children.
I don’t mean parents are to blame. Unfortunately, just as we destroy the environment—carelessly or intentionally—we also destroy languages, and with them cultures and many other things.
Another painful thing is when something as natural as your mother tongue is treated politically.
I have personally witnessed my Turkish writings placed before me as if I had committed a crime.
For a poet, who constantly works with language, it is painful to see the language and culture of one’s people dissolving into another language.
At such moments, I remember a poem by Wisława Szymborska:
We are children of our age
And this age is the age of politics...
Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past
your skin has a political tint
your eyes have a political aspect
whatever you say carries political resonance
...even when you walk through fields and forests
you take political steps
on political ground
Even apolitical poems are political
What is the question, my dear?
The question is political too.
How can writing in this language ever become non-political?
Perhaps it cannot.
But it seems that if linguistic human rights were recognized as a fundamental right, under democratic and equal conditions for all people, then perhaps this would become possible—not by minimizing or ignoring this natural right.
Showing the aesthetic dimensions of language and preserving it through poetry and literature—which belong to poets and writers of that language—is extremely important.
Perhaps their efforts to create beauty and spread it can operate beyond what is political.
In that case, politics may come under the shadow of their flight.
Why haven’t you published your poems as a book yet?
One reason is that I always placed them among my later priorities. In the queue of my desires, my poems always humbly gave their turn to another wish.
I even wrote a short poem to explain their delay, which I may print at the beginning of my poetry collection one day.
But they have always been dear to me—my precious scraps of paper, my treasures.
Another major reason is fear of seeing them mutilated during censorship review by the Ministry of Culture.
Final words?
Happy International Mother Language Day, and happy International Women’s Day.
Please read some of your poems for us.
هشت – یک
دستانش دو ستون خانه مرداش بودند
و همیشه بند
ناتوان از انجام هرکاری برای خویشتنِ خود
راه میرفت همچنان میخکوب
می شنید همچنان میخکوب
میدید همچنان میخکوب
در نهایت، سهماش
جز هشت – یک خانه مخروبه،
جز دو ستون فرسوده نبود!
خواب
اگر بخوابم آیی
مژگانم را به نرمی بههم گره میزنم
و صبحدم،
چون ارمغانی ناگشوده
میگشایم به روی آینه نگاهم
و تو را از آینه میخواهم.
Eight – One
Her hands were the two pillars
of men’s houses.
Always bound,
unable to do anything for herself.
She walked—still nailed down.
She heard—still nailed down.
She saw—still nailed down.
In the end, her share
was nothing but
an eight-by-one ruined house,
nothing but two worn-out pillars.
Sleep
If I sleep,
I gently tie my eyelashes together.
And at dawn,
like an unopened gift,
I open my gaze before the mirror
and ask the mirror for you.
یاغیش
هاوا یویونور یایین آراسیندا
لوت هاوانی گؤرجک
اَل ـ آیاق چالیر بوتون یاشیللیق
چمنلر خیالیندا چیمیرم،
هر نهیین آرتیق ـ اسگیگینی اونودورام.
کئچمیشلر فیکرینده،
قولاغیما گیلاسین یونگول تعادلینی آسمیشام
و بوتون آغیر سؤزلره بورجومو اؤدهمیش کیمیام،
دوز بو گون گلیرسن سه،
باغیش باغیشلایاجاغام
دوز بو گون!
تورلار
بالیقچیتورو
گلین تورو
تور پردهلر
شیطان تورو!
Rain
The air washes itself in the middle of summer.
You’ll see the naked sky.
All greenery dances hand in hand.
I bathe in the dreams of grasses,
and forget all that is absent.
Thinking of the past,
I have hung the light balance of cherries in my ears.
As if I have paid my debt
to all heavy words.
If you come today,
I will offer offerings
If only today.
Nets
Fishing net
Bridal veil
Curtain net
Devil’s net!
Source: Original Persian interview published by the Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation, 11 Esfand 1386 (1 March 2008).
Available at: https://ir-women.com/5346