Ali Abdollahi

The prolific poet and translator, Ali Abdollahi was born in Birjand, South Khorasan Province in Iran in 1968. He has published four collections of poetry and written biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke and Gunter Grass, as well as translating more than seventy books on literature and philosophy. A gifted translator from German, Abdollahi has introduced a large number of German poets and writers to Iranians, including Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertolt Brecht, Erich Fried, Franz Kafka, Heinrich Boll, Michael Kruger, Ilma Rakusa, Erich Kastner, Michael Ende, Heinrich Heine, Hermann Hesse, Fernando Pessoa and others.

In addition, Abdollahi has published collections of ancient Egyptian poetry, ancient Indian poetry, contemporary Japanese poetry and Lithuanian poetry, to which he has contributed substantive and detailed introductions.

Abdollahi has also written poems in German, some of which were recently published in an anthology called Heir ist Iran by Sujet Verlag in Bremen.

Abdollahi's is the Iranian moderator of the German Lyrikline poetry website www.lyrikline.org through which he has introduced Iranian poets to German readers and world poets to the Persian speakers.

His poems have been translated into German, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Dutch, English, Lithuanian, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic.

Abdollahi has won many scholarships and awards from literary institutions such as the Goethe Institute in Munich and Ubersetzerhaus Looren in Zurich. He has taken part in the Poesiefestival in Berlin many times and has given readings and lectures in Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Vienna, Cologne and New Delhi .

Until his recent dismissal from Isfahan State University, Abdollahi taught German language and literature in a number of Iranian universities. Now a freelance poet, writer and translator, he lives in Karaj City in Iran.