by Roja Chamankar
Translated from Persian by Mohsen Kiani
Daily Pieces for Breakfast, No. 13 Sweetheart, send me a neutral fatherland through a traveler coming my way. Send a white flag and a thin flowered blouse with the smell of the agitated Persian Gulf to a Pacific Ocean that is lonesome like your eyes. Daily Pieces for Breakfast, No. 12 Everything came to life from the possibility of your presence from the possibility of you sitting on the skin of this chair your fingers stroking the torso of this table your voice echoing through the veins of this room. Now everything is dying from the possibility of your absence chair table room me
Born in Borazjan in southern Iran in 1981, Roja Chamankar is a poet and filmmaker with an academic background in Dramatic Literature and Film Studies. She has published ten books of poetry in Iran, co-written four books for children, and translated two collections of poems from French into Persian. Her works have been translated into several other languages and have won a number of national and international awards, including the Greek Nikos Gatsos prize in 2016. Roja has participated in numerous poetry readings and festivals in Iran, France, Sweden, Austria, Malta, and the United States. A collection of her poems titled Dying in A Mother Tongue was published in November 2018 by the University of Texas Press.
Mohsen Kiani was born in 1981, in Iran. He has studied English Language and Literature and now lives in Toronto, where he teaches English and translates poetry. He has also edited several translations from English to Farsi, including the translation of three plays by William Shakespeare.