Nowruz in Exile

Issue 7 | Winter 2021 | Bänoo Zan

I sit at Haft-Seen
wait for the long distance
to take me home

Every voice is
a shower of rain
off the screen

I fight with myths
too grounded
to give up

too lonely
to recognize
the mirror

Bänoo Zan is a poet, librettist, translator, teacher, editor, and poetry curator, with more than 200 published poems and poetry-related pieces as well as three books. Song of Phoenix: Life and Works of Sylvia Plath, was reprinted in Iran in 2010. Songs of Exile, her first poetry collection, was released in 2016 in Canada by Guernica Editions. It was shortlisted for Gerald Lampert Memorial Award by the League of Canadian Poets in 2017. Letters to My Father, her second poetry book, was published in 2017 by Piquant Press in Canada. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Toronto’s most diverse poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012). It is a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions.

Orange Blossom Review

A Journal of Creative Arts

Nowruz in Exile