Mohsen Emadi in a nutshell

Mohsen Emadi in a nutshell

by Françoise Roy

I met Iranian writer and translator Moshen Emadi in September 2013, at a literary festival in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. He stroke me as a well-read but simple, well-mannered, easy-going and modest person, personality attributes that do a fair albeit deceiving job at hiding his huge talent as a poet and his fiery world vision.

Later that night, we shared a reading table, and I did not hear him read but show a video he himself made, based on a striking poem about the fate of bicycles when the villagers mounting them are all killed in civil war. It was not his voice on that video clip with the verses of his poem as subtitles, but that of a Spanish female poet. The direct impact of the images and Emadi’s heart-wrenching poetry truly captivated the audience. Later that week, I heard him read in Persian and I would be lying if I said I did not shed a tear, although the Mexican reader had not read the Spanish translation of the Farsi original yet. The beauty of foreign sounds, the life commitment I could sense in his words, his masterful use of language, all oozed through his poem, although I had no idea what the words meant. This is about as close as you get to magic.

I am in awe of the lyrical forcefulness of Mohsen’s poems. Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee writes in one of his novels: But in my experience Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love. Mohsen Emadi is therefore a highly-gifted poet because that is exactly what he does to his readers: he strikes them like a bolt of thunder.

I am familiar with one of his poetry collection, in its Spanish and now English version, titled Visible como el aire, legible como la muerte. His life —made of warfare in his homeland, environmental activism, intense and loyal friendships, love (only someone who has loved intensely can write like that), exile, banishment, protest against censorship and religious dogmatism— is like a word loom made expressly for poetry.  Not a peaceful ride through green meadows, that is true. But isn’t poetry a born foe of ease, subservience and self-indulgence? Expect no easy ride if you want to dive into Mohsen Emadi’s poetry.

Mohsen Emadi has a unique way to knit or sew together, without the reader noticing the stitches, grave social and political concerns together with a very intimate love tale that unfolds like a black, white and red fabric over the reader’s face, a veil through which you feel more than see. I use these three colors because I believe they best describe Mohsen Emadi’s prowess at a craft in which he is capable of squeezing blood from stones, of providing both the kiss and the dagger.