Echoes in Exile

by Sheema Kalbasi

Echoes in Exile is a rich collection of poetry describing Iran, the Middle East,politics, the complex society, intellectual history and human issues. The poems are intimate and are presented in a form that makes the unthinkable familiar.

Genres: Poetry

85 pages, Paperback

First published November 24, 2006

About the author

Sheema Kalbasi (Persian: شیما کلباسی‎‎) was born on November 20, 1972 in Tehran, Iran and grew up in Pakistan and Denmark. She is a poet, writer and activist. Her work covers feminism, war, refugees and human rights. Sheema is also a filmmaker and produces content around women’s issues, Sharia Law and freedom of expression. Her poems have been anthologized and translated into more than 20 languages. She has taught refugee children and worked for the UNHCR and the Center for Refugees in Pakistan. Sheema lives in the United States.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Echoes in Exile is a sporadically good collection of heart-felt poetry focusing on the themes of dislocation, emigration, exile and war. Mingled with those main plots Kalbasi attempts to portray the clash of cultures and identities that comes from the trauma of uprooting. It is divided into two parts. The first contains poems more explicitly dealing with war and trauma, poems that grasp onto physical imagery and religious symbolism, in poems such as 'Kaddish' (And on the eight day / God created his bloody sore / the Middle East) and 'Sitting Buddha'. Objects provide more photographic impressions, like the touching 'Drawings' which moves from a child's costume to a dead father, guns and bombs.

Whereas the first half contains dense, difficult but powerful poems, rewarding in their complex, clashing imagery, the second half retreats into a more personal world, breaking poetic form and telling stories of love in exile. They are titled 'Silent Sensuality' and, in flowing prose, tell revealing, open vignettes of physical and emotional attachment and love in a setting of newness, of searching for an anchor. Together they form a narrative, important because some of the poems are mere snippets that alone do little. They work as a dialogue, as short love letters, with the voice, or the ear, of the lover doubling as the loved one and as a troublesome, emotional new relationship with a new country or a new home. The extended metaphor works in places but the entire sequence is overlong and sometimes a little clumsy.

When it clicks, Echoes in Exile throws out some lovely moments, such as Sinbad (I brush / The night out of your hair / The salt from the skin tune) but the more accomplished, dissectable poems come in the first half. 'Mama in the War', 'Exile' and 'For Women of Afghanisten' are the best of the lot, loaded with emotion and a sense of authentic experience, dealing very directly with the trauma of dislocation and the victims of the world's upheavals. 4