We translated this poem as part of the PTC’s 20th birthday showcase at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich – the first of five showcase weekends in 2024. The theme of the showcase weekend was ‘exile and arrival’ which prompted guest translator Elhum Shakerifar to choose this poem, suffused with longing for childhood, family and home. Elhum provided extensive notes on the poet and the language, which I’ll quote from now:
‘This poem is from Parinaz Fahimi’s posthumously published collection Poppies with Alef. Parinaz was a student in architecture at the university of SOAS in London, where she died of a brain tumour in 2016. She had always written poetry and wrote a lot more towards the end of her life; sadly she never saw her dream of being published come true in her lifetime. The collection was published in Iran some years later with high praise and an introduction by Ebrahim Golestan. In the context of a reflection on poetry and exile, I am happy that we have the opportunity to share and discuss Parinaz Fahimi’s work, and to bring her poetry into English, as it is in this country—far from home—that she took her last breaths.’
We had some wonderfully lively discussions about baking terms (what does it mean when we say ‘sweet bread’ and ‘pastry’ in English as compared to Persian?), capitalisation (Persian doesn’t have capital letters, so how should we capitalise and punctuate?) and the subjunctive mood (how possible is it that the speaker can solve their heartache?). We aimed to stay within the semantic field of baking, so ended up rejecting alternative comforting words like ‘cocooned’ and ‘swaddled’. We also intentionally chose to keep the terms vague enough so that people from a variety of culinary backgrounds might also be taken back to their childhoods with the Proustian smells in this delicious poem.
Helen Bowell – Poet-facilitator