Since 2022, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement has made historic advances in fighting for the rights of Iranian girls and women. With protests that have ripped all across the world, the demonstrations have continued Iran’s long tradition of fusing literature with politics, showing that where people and ideas go, poetry soon follows. Here, Cy Strom, co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution (open for submissions!), discusses the texts, songs, and slogans that make up the fabric of contemporary revolution.
The Iranian revolution that began in September 2022 responded to no political manifesto. Instead, it flared up to an unforgettable line of people’s poetry: “Zan, Zandeghi, Azadi!” This is how “Woman, Life, Freedom” sounds in Persian.
In Kurdish, the language in which this slogan was first spoken, its words are “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî.” That is what Mahsa Jina Amini—the Iranian-Kurdish woman whose brutal death catalyzed the protests—would have heard. Protestors in Iran continue to pay respect to the slogan’s origins when they chant both the Kurdish and Persian words, even when Kurdish is not their mother tongue. In both languages, the words of this slogan are balanced and graceful, the rhythms assertive. It is people’s poetry.
The slogan was first circulated among the women militia fighters in Rojava, the western Kurdish lands by the Syrian-Turkish border, and spread through the writings of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Activists and protestors in the streets have now taken these three words as the name for this first ever feminist revolution, and a statement of the best in hopes and ideals for all people everywhere.
Within days of its outbreak, Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution also found its anthem. Amidst Persian-language reworkings of the World War II partisan song “Bella Ciao” (which kept its wildly incongruous Italian refrain) and the 1970s Chilean insurgent march “El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido,” a string of found poetry began to sound out in Iran, artfully arranged and set to music by singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour. The people in the streets quickly taught themselves to sing this winding melody, which begins as a murmur but gathers force until a last intake of breath pushes out the words: “Azadi! Azadi!” Freedom. Hajipour assembled the lyrics to this song, which he called “Baraye” (“For” or “For the Sake Of”), from people’s tweets. Some of these were political slogans, some were complaints, some were sweet dreams: “For a dance in the alley. . . For the dreams of the dumpster kids. . . For the jailed beautiful minds. . . For the tranquilizers and insomnia.” The song is said to have gained forty million views in forty-eight hours, and it earned Hajipour six days in prison with the threat of more to come. In February 2023, “Baraye” also earned the first ever Grammy awarded for the best song for social change.
The link between poetry and struggle is nothing new in Iran. “Tulips Bloom From Youths’ Blood” dates to the early years of the twentieth century. This is the poem that Aref Qazvini (1882–1934) composed to salvage shreds of hope from the wreckage of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, a series of events extending from 1905 to 1911. The poem’s stanzas are a litany of desolate landscapes and desolate souls—including the poet’s own. Yet from these depths, Qazvini rouses himself to proclaim:
Whoever fears death is by fear slain
The lovers’ dance of death is not a game of chess
If you have courage, prepare for campaign(trans. Bänoo Zan)
The Constitutional Revolution was put down violently, though while it continued, Qazvini worked and lived as a peripatetic revolutionary bard. His poems and songs, composed in Persian classical modes, have come to represent that turbulent era for Iranians. “Tulips Bloom From Youths’ Blood” was eventually set to music; it is still performed and its words have not been forgotten by the people of Iran.
In September 2023, the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s murder, hundreds of marchers assembled in Toronto, carrying posters with the photos of dead Iranian protestors against a white background. Red droplets showed against the white—and as they fell, these drops of blood sprang up as stylized red tulips in the lower register of the poster. The words of Qazvini’s poem had arced over a century, returning in 2023 as a visual element on a series of protest posters. Words that are spoken are forgotten, and treatises lie unopened on the shelf, while lines of poetry live forever.
It is tempting to fantasize that when an insurgent people find the apt line to proclaim or the right song to sing, their cause is assured. This can only be fantasy. Yet, even the most disillusioned and unsympathetic ear can hear the élan with which crowds chant in both Persian and Kurdish: “Zan, Zandeghi, Azadi!” “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî!” A slogan with such an electric charge can embolden a lone protestor, forge protestors into a purposeful crowd, and unite disparate crowds into a movement. The calls on the streets of Iran and across the globe are a poetry of the masses. In the heat of struggle, they motivate, transmit information, proclaim solidarity—and construct solidarity where once it was hard to find. These chants are an artistic performance of revolt.
As our response to the revolt begun by the women of Iran, Bänoo Zan and I are accepting submissions for an international anthology that we are co-editing: Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. We are looking for the kinds of poems that trouble oppressors: denunciations of injustice, laments for the fallen, and bitter curses. We expect to receive prayers, examinations of the poet’s own conscience, celebrations of life, lyrical musings, autobiographical fragments, and visions of a better future. We want this collection to uncover the dimensions of the Iranian revolution and the meaning it has for the people of Iran and the whole world. We want this to be a book in the shape of a revolution.
And it may be that an inspired image in one of the poems we select will speak to activists—today, or a hundred years from now.
Cy Strom works as an editor. He holds MA and MPhil degrees from Columbia University in early modern European history and has published in academic and other areas. He edits in different genres and sometimes languages, and has had a role in developing professional editorial standards and educational materials. Cy and Iranian-born poet Bänoo Zan are co-editors of the forthcoming poetry anthology Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution (Guernica Editions, Canada).
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