To kindle a flame on Middle Eastern contemporary poetry in English that is relatively unknown to the Western readers, Voice of Monarch Butterflies brings together the poems by ten emerging to well-accomplished poets including Soodabeh Saeidnia, Mohammad Forouzani, Debasis Mukhopadhyay, Aimal Zaman, Abu Sufian, Ash Bahget, Anooshka Khazaeie, Ahmad Al-Khatat, Mohamed Samy and Latif Shareef Dhmayd who are originally from different countries like Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even farther like Bangladesh and India. The shimmering elements of Middle Eastern poetry and art either flow visibly in their English words or hide behind the modern and fancy lines but finally show off themselves to the reader through the pieces and short poems, which have been selected among the captivating lines of joy, nature, life and love to despair, distress, grief and death. This collection is like a terrace on the hanging gardens of poetry inviting readers to hear the voice of migratory butterflies.
About the Author: Soodabeh Saeidnia was born in Iran (1973) and received her Pharm.D. (1997) from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, and also Ph.D. of Pharmacognosy (2002) from Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Iran. She has worked as Visiting Researcher and awarded a Foreign Researcher Fellowship to work as a Research Associate both in Kyoto University, Japan (2002-2003 and 2005-2006), as well as Assistant and Associate Professor at TUMS (2007-2015) and Visiting Professor at Saskatchewan University, Canada (2013-2014). She has written roughly 150 scientific papers for various academic journals, as well as academic books and book chapters in both English and Farsi. She is also interested in English literature and poetry, and has published a collection of her poems, Harfhaee- Baraye- Khodam (Words for myself), in the Farsi language. Now, Soodabeh is living in New York and her poems have been published (or a head of publishing) in the American magazines and literary journals including Squawk Back, Sisyphus Quarterly, Paradox, TimBookTu, Bobbling of the Irrational, SPINE, American Writers Journal, Tuck Magazine, La Libertad, Tiny Poetry, Indiana Voice Journal, The Pen, 352 degrees and the Great Weather for Media. A number of her poems have been printed in the books Where the Mind Dwells and American Poet by Eber & Wein Publishing as well as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze by Johnson Publications and Artistic. Her newest book, Street of the Ginkgo Trees is now available online on Amazon.