Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths, Sholeh Wolpé's third collection of poems, is a surreal journey of sorrows and sins, of love, ghosts, and Saudi princes, of banishment inside one's own skin. Wild in its leaps and images, these poems explore personal and psychological exile from a marriage, lovers, expectations, and finally, country.

Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Wolpé, Sholeh

Poetry

University of Arkansas Press

“In Sholeh Wolpe’s Rooftops of Tehran , an unforgettable cast of characters emerges, from the morality policeman with the poison razor blade to the crow-girls flapping their black garments, from the woman with the bee-swarm tattoo emerging from her crotch to the author as a young girl on a Tehran rooftop with a God’s eye view ‘hovering above a city / where beatings, cheatings, prayers, songs, / and kindness are all one color’s shades.’ Here is a delicious book of poems, redolent of saffron and stained with pomegranate in its vision of Iran and of the immigrant life in California. Wolpe’s poems are at once humorous, sad, and sexy, which is to say that they are capriciously human, human even in that they dream of wings and are always threatening to take flight.”―Tony Barnstone, Award winning poet and translator, author of The Golem of Los Angeles

Rooftops of Tehran

Red Hen Press

Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." It is in this vein that Sholeh WolpÉ's mesmerizing memoir in verse unfolds. In this lyrical and candid work, her fifth collection of poems, WolpÉ invokes the abacus as an instrument of remembering. Through different countries and cultures, she carries us bead by bead on a journey of loss and triumph, love and exile. In the end, the tally is insight, not numbers, and we arrive at a place where nothing is too small for gratitude.

Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse

The Scar Saloon

About the Author\nNazanin Sahamizadeh is a writer, director and researcher of the play Manus . She set up the Verbatim Theatre group in Tehran and had the idea for the play after hearing about the abuse of detainees in Manus, an offshore detention centre for Australia. The award-winning play has been performed internationally including at the Adelaide Festival in Australia in 2017. It is based on the testimonies of several refugees including Kurdish detainee and journalist Behrouz Boochani,\nTorange Yeghiazarian founded Golden Thread in 1996 where she launched such visionary programs as ReOrient Festival & Forum, Middle East America (in partnership with the Lark and Silkroad Rising), Islam 101 (with Hafiz Karmali), New Threads, and the Fairytale Players. Torange’s plays include ISFAHAN BLUES, 444 DAYS, THE FIFTH STRING: ZIRYAB’S PASSAGE TO CORDOBA, and CALL ME MEHDI. Awards include the Gerbode-Hewlett Playwright Commission Award (ISFAHAN BLUES) and a commission by the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California (THE FIFTH STRING). Her short play CALL ME MEHDI is published in the anthology “Salaam. Peace: An Anthology of Middle Eastern-American Drama,” TCG 2009. She adapted the poem, I SELL SOULS by Simin Behbehani to the stage, and directed the premieres of OUR ENEMIES: LIVELY SCENES OF LOVE AND COMBAT and SCENIC ROUTES by Yussef El Guindi, THE MYTH OF CREATION by Sadegh Hedayat, TAMAM by Betty Shamieh, STUCK by Amir Al-Azraki and VOICE ROOM by Reza Soroor, amongst others. Her articles on contemporary theatre in Iran have been published in The Drama Review (2012), American Theatre Magazine (2010), and Theatre Bay Area Magazine (2010), and HowlRound. Torange has contributed to the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures and Cambridge World Encyclopedia of Stage Actors. Born in Iran and of Armenian heritage, Torange holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University. Torange has been recognized by Theatre Bay Area and is one of Theatre Communication Group’s Legacy Leaders of Color. She was honored by the Cairo International Theatre Festival (2016) and the Symposium on Equity in the Entertainment Industry (2017).\nSholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet, playwright and literary translator. Her performances, solo or in collaboration with musicians and artists, have been hailed by audiences as mesmerizing. Named a “2020-2021 Cultural Trailblazer” by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Sholeh is the recipient of a 2014 PEN Heim, 2013 Midwest Book Award and 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize, as well as artist fellowship and residencies in the U.S., Mexico, Spain, Australia and Switzerland. Her plays have been finalists and semifinalists at at Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Centenary Stage Women Playwrights, Ojai Playwrights Festival, and Ashland New Plays Festival. Sholeh ’s literary work includes five collections of poetry, several plays, three books of translations, and three anthologies. Her most recent publications include The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton & Co), Cómo escribir una canción de amor (Olifante Ediciones de Poesia, Spain), and Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths (University of Arkansas Press.) Sholeh has performed her literary work with world-renowned musicians at Quincy Jones Presents series on The Broad Stage, Skirball Cultural Center Series, Los Angeles Aloud, The Broad Museum, LA County Museum of Art Ahmanson stage, Singapore Literature Festival, UNSW School of Arts and Media theater, and other venues. Her libretto for a new oratorio, The Conference of the Birds, composed by Fahad Siadat and choreographed by Andre Megerdichian will premiere in Los Angeles in 2022. Sholeh Wolpe travels internationally as a performing poet, writer and public speaker. She has also taught at UCLA― where she was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence in 2018― as well as University of Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program in the United States.

New Iranian Plays (World Drama)

Sahamizadeh, Nazanin

Yeghiazarian, Torange

Samini, Nagmeh

Yaghoubi, Mohammad

Khaleghi, Mojgan

Sarreshteh, Keyvan

Hekmatnia, Leila

Dramas & Plays

Aurora Metro Pubns

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