above/ground press: Khashayar Mohammadi

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for The OceanDweller by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi) (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, trans. Khashayar Mohammadi

above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple bound, 10 pages | Purchase

Via Khashayar Mohammadi’s translation, Saeed Tavanaee Marvi cruises the strait between Earth and Hell, acacias and tornadoes, Buster Keaton and a swarm of insects. “Pain is the key to the human interior,” we learn in White Poplar; the door opens on a dizzying inner/outer world, where phones both “resemble planets / giving meaning to long incomprehensible numbers,” and smell of violets (Me, Her, Telephone), where ancient battles break out, and a mysterious vehicle called the OceanCruiser sings, in its “most cordial hymn,” that “we’re born to test our hearts … kiss whomever you love without a word,” (The Deep Wound.) On meaning’s rough seas, The OceanDweller—the first volume of Marvi’s work in English—keeps us precariously, giddily afloat.

THE OCEANDWELLER
Saeed Tavanaee Marvi translated by Khashayar Mohammadi
$4

the sounds of the Ocean
all sounds crash into cliffs
I recite all my poems to the Ocean

soft music. we go inside the OceanCruiser. The OceanDweller walks among the white Poplars. We can hear the rustling of leaves. while walking on the dried leaves he speaks of the genesis of Song

a flower has bloomed
dried root
lively crown

some reprieve. the voice changes its timbre

Asuriq was the first flower on this planet; its pollen carried by the comet Indra to the depths of this planet’s oceans. Long roots and small leaves. Volcanic cycles made the flower surface 130 million years ago. Humanity had not yet come to earth.. It was the time of birds, alone with flowers on the surface. it was then that songs began to take form. the first song was a dialogue between the birds and Asuriq.

the room. The television speaks in Farsi. No sound of birds.
the poem is recited with soft music in the background.

I dreamt of you
it was spring
we were walking
you cried
there were no flowers

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

further of his translations of Marvi's work appeared recently at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics

cover image: Babak Tavanaee Marvi

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi is a poet and translator born in the city of Mashhad in 1983. His books include The Woman With Chlorophyllic eyes, Verses of Death: An Anthology of American Poetry and a translation of Richard Brautigan’s Tokyo Montana Express.

Khashayar Mohammadi is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer, Translator and Photographer. He is the author of poetry chapbooks Moe’s Skin by ZED press 2018, Dear Kestrel by knife | fork | book 2019 and Solitude is an Acrobatic Act by above/ground press 2020. His debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press in Spring 2021

This is Mohammadi’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after Solitude is an Acrobatic Act (2020).

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