Sems Kesmai | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Native name | شمس کسمایی |
| Born | March 4, 1884 Yazd, Iran |
| Died | November 3, 1961 (aged 77) Tehran, Iran |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Iranian |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
Sems Kesmai (March 4, 1884 – November 3, 1961; Persian: شمس کسمایی) was an Iranian poet known for her innovations in Persian modernist poetry.
Sems Kesmai was born 1884 in Yazd, Iran.[1][2] Her father was an immigrant from Georgia,[2] and her family was broadly from Iran's nearby Gilan region.[3]
She pursued some studies in her hometown, but she was married off to a tea merchant, Hossein Arbabzadeh, at a young age and did not resume her education until she was 27 years old and living with him in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.[2] There, she studied Russian and became familiar with the activism of the period.[2] When she was 35 years old, her husband became bankrupt, and they moved to Tabriz in Iranian Azerbaijan.[2][3][4] There, she started writing for activist newspapers—particularly Tajaddod—arguing against British intervention in Iran.[2][3][4] She also began to publish poetry in modernist magazines and women's rights publications, including the magazine Azadistan.[3][4]
Kesmai is considered the first female Persian modernist poet, described as "the mother of modern Persian poetry."[2][3][4] She and her modernist peers saw moving away from the "rhetorical acrobatics" of traditional Persian poetry as the only way to save poetry's essence, rejecting Arabic prosody.[1] Her writing often incorporated unexpected vocabulary, including Russian and Turkish words.[2] Her poetry also sometimes included elements of Iranian nationalism.[4]
In addition to poetry, Kesmai also wrote on feminist subjects, including opposition to veiling for women.[2] However, after her son died in fighting during the Jungle Movement rebellion, and Mohammad Khiabani's uprising in Tabriz was crushed, she began focusing on pure poetry rather than activist writing.[2][3]
Eventually, at age 57, she returned to her hometown of Yazd,[2] before spending her final years in Tehran.[3] She died there in 1961.[1][3] Despite her important early role in Persian modernist poetry, relatively few of Kesmai's poems survive to the present day.[3][4]