![]() ![]() In Prison Poems, Mahvash Sabet, a Bahá’í imprisoned for practicing her beliefs in the Islamic Republic of Iran, lays bare the truth of her 20 year prison sentence, a truth that encompasses celebration as well as grief, and hope as well as despair. The truth conveyed by such writing is often hard to read because it is a dark truth that thrives in those crevices in human experience that emerge when individual lives collide with those legendary powers of darkness that are responsible for the atrocities to which so many prisoners of conscience have been subjected - unjust imprisonment, torture, starvation, execution. ![]() ![]() The purpose of a poetry of witness is to tell the truth about some of the most difficult experiences human beings have had to endure, and to tell that truth in a language muscular and agile enough to carry the full weight of its significance. Prison Poems by MAVASH SABET adapted from the Persian by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani based on translations by Violette and Ali Nakhjavani (George Ronald: Oxford, 2013) Review by SANDRA LYNN HUTCHISON ![]()
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