Scorched Glass - An Evening Of Modern Iranian Poetry

Leading Iranian and UK poets join forces to read poems from Modern Poetry in Translation’s Iranian focus and features work from brilliant London Iranian poet Ziba Karbassi, whose work resonates with the same purity and force as Marina Tsvetaeva’s. Karbassi gained attention with her astonishing poem ‘Sangsar’, (‘Death By Stoning’), written in her early twenties and concerning the stoning to death of a relative of her mother. Stephen Watts writes of her poetry, ‘I know of very few poets worldwide whose lyric intensity matches hers or whose language is as honest to terror and to love’. Stephen Watts will himself be reading his translations of Ziba’s poems, as well as work by Esmail Khoi and acclaimed Iranian poet and novelist Reza Baraheni. Other guests will include UK poets Paul Batchelor, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Pascale Petit who have all been involved in a project to translate modern Iranian poetry. This promises to be an evening of inspiring and surprising poetry from one of the world’s great poetic cultures.