A White Suite

Athena Farrokhzad

The house of poetry has many rooms. One of those rooms houses the texts of Athena Farrokhzad, an Iranian poet who grew up in Sweden and now teaches Swedish poems. Has she become Swedish? Her origin is determined by a father who had to flee with his family from a theocratic regime. Athena is from 1983, so thirty-five years old. Her parents named her after a Greek goddess. She is the goddess of the sky, namely of the clear, clear sky, of the clean, pure upper air. She is best known as the goddess of wisdom and goddess of art. In addition, she is often referred to as the goddess of martial arts and peace. Strange perhaps, the latter, but the art of war has always been associated with deliberation and wisdom.