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On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say

Marjorie Lotfi Gill

my grandmother was called Nasrin,
that she died two years ago in Tabriz
and I couldn’t go to say goodbye,
that she knew nothing of power,
nuclear or otherwise. I want to say
that the fires for Chahar Shanbeh Suri
were built by the hands of our neighbours;
as children we were taught to jump
and not be caught by the flame. I want to say
my cousin Elnaz, the one born after I left,
has a son and two degrees in chemistry,
and trouble getting a job. I want to say
that the night we swam towards the moon
hanging over the horizon of Caspian Sea,
we found ourselves kneeling on a sandbar
we couldn’t see, like a last gift. I want to say
I’m the wrong person to ask.

Marjorie Lotfi Gill, our first writer in residence in partnership with Wigtown Book Festival, is a poet based in Edinburgh and the Poet in Residence at Jupiter Artland. She co-founded and runs Open Book, a charity that organises shared reading groups for vulnerable adults, and takes those groups to linked events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Marjorie Lotfi Gill, first writer in residence in partnership with Wigtown Book Festival, is a poet based in Edinburgh and the Poet in Residence at Jupiter Artland. She co-founded and runs Open Book, a charity that organises shared reading groups for vulnerable adults, and takes those groups to linked events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

 

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