Woman, Life, Freedom | Call for Poetry Submissions

Tehran, March 8, 1979 – Women demand a government based on gender equality
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Since September 2022, protests by the longstanding women’s movement in Iran have been violently repressed by Iran’s government and complicit police forces. Among many incidents, hundreds of girls in Iranian schools have been targets of chemical attacks. Increasing rates of executions have emboldened solidarity across entire families to continue the protests for gender equality and the social, political, and economic changes possible with expanded civil rights for women. Journalists and artists have been documenting the local events as they occur. Because the Persian women’s movement is an international network of people who live in communities and work for institutions around the world, events in Iran have effects everywhere. International solidarity is turning into responsive international action.

If poetry has a role in social change for social justice, then surely the next several months will be time for literary publishers, poetry event organizers, and readers, to undertake that role on an international scale. Poems must be made available and accessibly distributed for that to happen.

Bänoo Zan, an Iranian-Canadian poet living in exile, and Cy Strom, an award-winning editor from Toronto, have a call for poetry submissions for an anthology with the Toronto publisher Guernica Editions, to be titled Woman, Life, Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. Submissions are currently open, and the deadline is March 15, 2024.