Mehri Kashani obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/18/mehri-kashani-obituary

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Our friend Mehri Kashani, a poet and writer, who has died aged 79, was deeply admired in Persian literary circles in London, where she lived, and in Iran, her home country, which she left after the revolution of 1979, and missed.

She was born in Tehran, daughter of Mohammad-Taghi and Ozra Lankarani. Theirs was a traditional and religious family, but one open to liberal thinking and with a love of books, which influenced Mehri’s own passion for reading and writing. She married Hamid Kashani, an entrepreneur who in the early 1970s set up the first department store in Iran. Mehri devoted her life in Tehran to raising her children, writing and charitable work.

After the revolution she settled in London, where her literary career took off. She self-published her writings in small volumes, or online. Her work received solid critical acclaim, including praise from the poet and critic Esmail Khoi. The Thursday Gathering, a monthly literary event held at her home, attracted a wide range of new and established poets, writers, artists, musicians and performers.

Her poems were distinct for the sharpness of her tone, simplicity of her language, their extremely powerful imagery and their concise and gripping narrative, as here:

I said: mine is the story of the three fish.../S/he said the one that left/The one that stayed/Or the one that died!/I said: the one that left/The one that stayed/And the one that died!

In 2009, she published NIKI, a selection of her poems, and Naghashi Khanom (Miss Painting), a selection of her short stories, in print. In them, she explored themes from her life as a woman and her struggles against banalities in politics, arts and relationships, with uncompromising wit and humour.

Hamid predeceased Mehri. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, and four grandchildren.