Iranian Exilic Poetry in Australia: Reinventing the Third Space

Abstract

I've wrapped the moon's head in a scarf,slipped the bracelets of the world on her wrists,rested my head on the gypsy sky's shoulderand goodbye . . . (Talebi, Belonging 161)AN IRANIAN POET SETS OFF TO AUSTRALIA AND STARTS HER JOURNEY WITH THESE words. Her long poem, alternating between the Iranian and the Australian spaces, tells about the possibilities of reinventing the Self into exile, for herself and her generation.Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the ensuing economic, political, and intellectual restrictions, a significant number of Iranian writers have settled abroad, primarily in Western countries. Approximately one million Iranians have migrated to North America, Europe, and Australia. Around 35,000 Iranians now live in Australia (Census Explorer). Some were already writers in Iran and continued their work in the diaspora; some started to write in their new country; some write in Persian and some in English or other European languages. In-betweenness is a common theme that runs through exilic Iranian texts, but this is expressed differently depending on the writer's relation to his/her host country, to the homeland, and to the diasporic space. This feeling of in-betweenness comes to create a Third Space that is emblematic of contemporary Iranian writings and to a large extent reflects diasporic writing. This article will question how the transnational movement of Iranian writers cements the Third Space and will bring new findings to the concept of Third Space as applied to Australia.It will focus on the poems of Grânâz Moussavi, a well-known young poet living in Australia, who travels and forth between Australia and Iran. She is a representative of her generation of young diasporic writers, integrated into the Iranian literary milieu, and to a lesser extent into the Australian one, unique in her kind in Australia as most Iranian writers who keep in touch with the Iranian cultural scene live in Europe or North America. Moussavi was born in 1974 in Tehran. She has so far published four collections of poems, the latest in 2011 being self-published. Her poetry has been translated and published in French, English, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Kurdish. She migrated to Australia in 1997, graduated in Film studies from Flinders Lkiiversity, then obtained a PhD from the Lkiiversity of Western Sydney. She is also a filmmaker and her first feature film λ/fy Tehran for Sale, released in 2010, is the first feature coproduction between Iran and Australia. It was screened in many international film festivals. She frequently visits Iran and returned to live there between 2006 and 2009 (Moussavi, personal communication). This and forth is reflected in her poetry, which is about her living between two worlds and her constant longing and belonging. Through Moussavi's poetry, will show that the Third Space created by her displacement does not dissolve the Self in multiple identities. Moussavi's poems help to give new meaning to the Third Space and original perspectives on it by offering it as a way to implement the continuity of her Self and her belonging to an unchanging nature, far from national belongings.Many Iranian writers cannot go to their homeland, due to fears of persecution, and live in a perpetual state of exile. Even though Moussavi often goes to Iran, she does not envision a grand homecoming. Fier poems make clear that, in the present situation, she will not relocate to Iran. her poem Denunciation in the collection Barefoot Till Morning, she writes,1Let's go with giant leapTo any city of the world and that on our cheeks the stamp of exileNot be a shame (88)But at the same time, she concludes her poem Bell with the line I want to go back (27), and she repeats it at the beginning of one of her latest poems, In the Phone Booth:I want to go backAll my months are travelAll of them (Red Memories 44)Because of her constant longing for Iran, one can also argue that she is an exile, according to Flamid Naficy's definition: What turns an emigre, expatriate, refugee, immigrant, or a person in diaspora into an exile is this double relationship to location: physically located in one place while dreaming of an unrealizable return to another (Naficy 17). …