Iraj Ziayi was born in 1949 in Rasht, north of Iran. His family moved to Talesh, a small town on the Caspian Sea when he was 4 and Iraj spent his childhood in a beautiful environment surrounded by forest, mountain and sea. His family later moved to Isfahan where Iraj went to high school and joined ‘Jong-e Isfahan’ circle, a group of influential writers and poets. His poetry got published in literary journals during the sixties and seventies but his first collection ‘ The Sudden Movement of Objects’ was published in 1994. His subsequent collections include: ‘Platforms Are Empty’ (1995), ‘ Under the Foot of Tumult’ (1997) , ‘There is Always an Empty Chair Beside You’ (2007), ‘This Bird has come from the Time of the Seljuqs’ (2011). His collected poems were published in 2015.
Ziayi is inspired by the natural environment of Iran which he has travelled a lot. He has lived in different cities and references to Iranian geography, history and nature is abundant in his poetry. Objects, animate or inanimate, are present in his poetry in minute details. His relationship with objects is very personal and peculiar. In a surreal setting, he picks unrelated objects and puts them alongside each other creating a world where each object has their individual life. Because of his love of objects, he has been given the nickname of ‘the Poet of Objects’ by the critic; a title that he has happily embraced.
