In a time when Tehran trembles under bombardment and language fractures in the wake of silence, Prism of Wounded Light emerges as both witness and wound. Composed against the smoldering backdrop of a social movement and the looming specter of war, this trilingual volume brings together poetry, painting, and translation in a single act of resistance and remembrance.
For Amin Haddadi, poetry is not reportage, but revelation. Drawing on the Persian tradition where neveshtan—to write—is an act of image-making, he offers a poetics of ekphrasis in its most visceral sense: writing as incision, word as burn, line as illumination. Each poem here flares like the naked flame of a candle—fragile yet defiant—shedding light from a historical wound refracted through a prism of mourning and hope.
Translated into English and French by Dariush Shahinrad, and accompanied by twenty-one powerful drawings and paintings by Fatemeh Shakoori, this book is not simply a collection of poems—it is a collective composition, a multilingual, multimedia lament, invocation, and gesture toward presence in the face of obliteration.
These poems are not “translated” in the traditional sense. They are recomposed in other tongues, each version a companion shard of the same prismatic body. They speak across the chasms of untranslatability—through poetry, through image, through flame.
Prism of Wounded Light is a reminder—not a memorial. It does not look back in nostalgia, but burns forward, embodying the absence, summoning the secret, and insisting that poetry, like the homeland, remains a witness to its dead.
Behind the words & images
Amin Haddadi (born September 1992) is a poet, translator, and literary critic based in Tehran. His published works include “Open Wounds and Tehran Spleen” (2021, Afraz Publishing); “Lathe Working the Metal of the Future: Four Fragments and an Anthology of Portraits by Majid Naficy” (2019, Baru Publishing); “The Entrance Permission Cycle: Pilgrimage Prayers for Fear and Wandering in Non-Place” (2023, Baru Publishing); and “Dialogue with the Germen: A Suit with Two Unfinished Letters” (2025, Beyraqhā va Lakkehā).
His latest poetry book, “Prism of Wounded Light,” a trilingual edition of poems accompanied by twenty-one drawings and paintings, has been published by Asemana Books. Several of his articles and translations have appeared in literary journals in Iran and abroad, both in print and online.
Haddadi holds a degree in cognitive psychology and works in psychotherapy, alongside engaging in projects in the field of art therapy.
Fatemeh Shakouri is an Iranian artist born in 1979 in Tehran. She earned her bachelor’s degree in fashion design from the Tehran University of Art and her master’s degree in art research from Allameh Tabataba’i University. At the age of 19, she became an art teacher, a role that significantly influenced her work and for which she has received prestigious national awards in the field of art education. Shakouri has held three solo exhibitions and participated in over 40 group exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Tehran. The present collection was exhibited in March 2023 under the title “In Praise of Light” at Doost Gallery in Tehran.
Dariush Shahinrad (born October 1997) holds a degree in Pure Mathematics from Sharif University of Technology and a Ph.D. in French Language and Literature from the University of Tehran. He is engaged in translating literary and philosophical texts and books from French and English. His doctoral dissertation focuses on Espacementale Poetry movement (sheʿr-i ḥajm), the Other Poetry movement (Sheʿr-e Digar), and Bijan Elahi, modernist Persian poet.
