Poems

I Sit on the Pier

Notes

The idea of anyone sitting on a beach fully clothed wearing freshly-polished shoes is so alien in English that, after much discussion, we had to move the scenario to a pier, where formal dress is much more plausible. We also had difficulties with that final verb because the idea is that freedom is being address in the last couplet. For us, 'kiss' inevitably conjures up the idea of the man kissing her; whereas it's possible to imagine the 'embrace' of freedom.

In the original Farsi, none of these poems has a title. Because of the way our website is set up, we've had to use the first line as the title for each of them.

Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator