The Poetry of Mahvash Sabet

by | Sun Nov 2017 | Women

Mahvash Sabet is free now.

It takes a special person to weather ten years of torture in an Iranian prison. Mahvash Sabet was a teacher and principal who was fired for being a Bahá’í. Then she helped start an online school because Bahá’í students were not allowed to attend university. Then she was put in prison; at first for twenty years, but that sentence was later reduced to ten.

Buy Mahvash Sabet’s book, Prison Poetry, here.

Here is a five-minute video describing the poetry Ms. Sabet wrote while in prison:

While Ms. Sabet was in prison, she was joined by Roxana Saberi, a journalist who was falsely accused and convicted of espionage. Ms. Saberi describes her encounter with Mahvash Sabet in this video:

Here is a portion of one of Mahvash’s poems:

What are they doing to us in this perilous place,
this prison of loss? 
But what can they do to a handful of dust
in the middle of chaos?
If they cut open our veins, red tulips will blush
like blood in the fields.
If they padlock our lips, the mouths of a thousand
spring buds are unsealed.

Here is another of Mahvash’s poems, read as part of the Prison Poems Project:

Love to all,
Ron