Simin Behbahani

Simin Behbahani (Tehran, 1927 – Tehran, 2014) was an Iranian poet, lyricist and activist for women's rights, and one of the most admired voices of modern Persian poetry. Born Siminbar Khalili, she wrote in Persian and is best known for her mastery of the ghazal, a classical form she reshaped for the concerns of her own time.

She grew up in a household steeped in letters and public life. Her father, Abbas Khalili, was a poet, journalist and newspaper editor; her mother, Fakhr-Ozma Arghun, taught French and was active in women's associations. Behbahani began writing as a teenager and published her first poem at fourteen. After experimenting with the free-verse style associated with Nima Yooshij, she returned to the ghazal and brought into it everyday speech, scenes of city life and the rhythms of ordinary conversation.

Her collections, among them The Broken Lute and Marble, mix romantic lyricism with a sharp look at society and power. After the 1979 revolution she spoke out against stoning and for women's rights, earning the nickname "Lioness of Iran". In 1988, following mass executions of political prisoners, she wrote a poem mourning them, and in 2008 she went to Parliament to oppose a proposed family law. She received international human rights awards and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In her final years she was constrained by the state: in 2010 her passport was confiscated to stop her travelling abroad. She died in Tehran in 2014. Her legacy lies in bringing the ghazal into everyday life and in making poetry a place of resistance for generations of Iranian readers.