Solmaz Sharif: March 7, 2018 (Updated a year ago)

The Poetry Center and the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University co-present a reading by Solmaz Sharif. Sharif reads from her book of poetry Look (Graywolf Press, 2016), and from new work in manuscript. The reading was followed by a reception, with the event held in celebration of the new Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies and its premier director, Persis Karim.

Steve Dickison introduces Persis Karim, the inaugural director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies. Karim discusses her professional relationship with Solmaz Sharif, beginning when Karim published Sharif's poem in the anthology A World Between (George Braziller, Inc., 1999) when Sharif was only 13 years old. She then introduces Sharif, who begins by explaining the writing process behind Look, taking off from definitions found in the United States Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. From Look, she reads "Safe House," "Drone," "Master Film," and "Force Visibility." She then reads two new works: "Social Skills Training," inspired by the language of the self-improvement industry, and "The Master's House." Sharif returns to Look, reading a series of poems titled "Reaching Guantanamo," intended as a series of redacted letters written to an inmate in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She ends by reading her English translation of a poem titled "The Bird Will Die," by Forough Farrokhzad, who is considered the grandmother of the free verse movement in Iran.