The house of world poets has been established in 2006 with the supports of Ahmad Shamlou’s official website as an independent and nonprofit project relying on individual donations and has been able to involve 30 volunteer editors and translators to publish more than 1000 high quality poetry translations.

After Islamic Revolution, Iranian modern poetry has suffered from a great absence of new voices due to the governmental censorship and restrictions. Since this ideological censorship and restriction has affected traditional book publishing, internet has become the only free sphere that makes an alternative voice to be heard by Iranian young generation. For us, all poets, in all corners of history and in all regions of the world are our contemporary poets; therefore we have devoted ourselves to research on and to translate world poetry. We have translated more than one hundred poets, including Vladimir Holan, Nichita Stanescu, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vasko Popa, Ilhan Berk, Mark Strand, Linda Pastan, W.S Merwin, Anna Swir, Zbigniew Herbert, Paul Celan, Rainer Maria Rilke, Denise Levertov, Donald Justice, Margaret Atwood, Ingeborg Bachmann, Tamura Ryuichi, Gunnar Ekelöf, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Kathleen Raine, and Leonard Nathan and many others.

The house of world poets is simply an anthology of world poetry in Persian including:

- Poetry from a growing number of countries

- An international poets' archive

- National and international poetry news

- Essays on poetry

- Information on important national and international poetry organizations

- Links to other poetry websites

- Online poetry readings and books

 

In the future, the house of world poets will:

-   Involve more poetry translators and editors

-   Introduce more good poetry into Iranian society

-   Publish a yearly anthology of world poetry

-   Found a prize of best poetry translation of the year

-   Start the world poetry in Iranian daily life project   

 

You can support our editors, translators, technical section and help us to make the future plans running by your donation. We welcome all levels of donation, whether it's a one-time gift.

Please do not hesitate to ask questions. You can contact us at editors@poets.ir .