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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Negative of a Group Photograph

Negative of a Group Photograph

Negative of a Group Photograph   brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country.

Negative of a Group Photograph   runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran’s book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.

The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar.

Author

Azita Ghahreman

Azita Ghahreman

Books

Negative of a Group Photograph

Azita Ghahreman was born in Mashhad in 1962. One of Iran’s leading poets, she has lived in Sweden since 2006. She is the author of five collections of poetry, Eve’s Songs (1991), Sculptures of Autumn (1995), Forgetfulness is a Simple Ritual (2002), The Suburb of Crows (2008) and Under Hypnosis in Dr Caligari’s Cabinet (2012). In 2013 she was a recipient of Swedish PEN’s Prince Wilhelm Award.

Russian and Ukrainian translations of her poems were awarded the Udmurtia Russian Academy’s Ludvig Nobel Prize in 2014. Her pamphlet, Poems, was published by the Poetry Translation Centre in 2012. Negative of a Group Photograph, a dual-language Farsi-English edition translated by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar, is published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre.

Translator

Maura Dooley

Maura Dooley

Books

Negative of a Group Photograph

Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, worked for some years in Yorkshire, and has lived in London for the past 25 years. She is a freelance writer and lectures at Goldsmiths’ College. She edited   Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets   (1997) and The Honey Gatherers: A Book of Love Poems   (2002) for Bloodaxe, and   How Novelists Work   (2000) for Seren. Her selection,   Sound Barrier: Poems 1982-2002, was published by Bloodaxe in 2002, drawing on collections including   Explaining Magnetism   (1991) and Kissing a Bone (1996), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations.   Kissing a Bone   and her later collection Life Under Water, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2008, were both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her poem ‘Cleaning Jim Dine’s Heart’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2015, and is included in her latest collection,   The Silvering,   also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was published by Bloodaxe in March 2016. She received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2016. Her translation (with Elhum Shakerifar) of Azita Ghahreman’s Negative of a Group Photograph.

Published by

Bloodaxe Books & Poetry Translation Centre, 2018
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Negative of a Group Photograph   brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country.

Negative of a Group Photograph   runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran’s book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.

The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar.

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