I have an empty pocket
                                                      of ambitions
                                                                                                         on my right
                                                  and a full pocket
                                                      of dreams
on my left
                                                       and both
                                        sewn to the back of my dress

 

 

Selected byNolcha Fox
Image credit:Hermes Rivera

Soodabeh was born in Iran and received her Pharm.D. and Ph.D. of Pharmacognosy from Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Iran. She has worked as a Visiting Researcher and awarded a Foreign Researcher Fellowship to work as a Research Associate in Kyoto University, Japan, as well as Assistant and Associate Professor at TUMS and Visiting Professor at Saskatchewan University, Canada. She has written roughly 150 scientific papers for various academic journals, books and Chapbooks (published by Springer and Elsevier).

She is also interested in literature and poetry, and has published a collection of her poems, “Harfhaee- Baraye- Khodam” (Words for myself, published by Azad University, Tehran) and “A Poem and Three Generations” in Farsi.

Soodabeh is currently living in Kew Gardens, New York. Her English poems have been published in different American, Canadian and British magazines and literary journals including Squawk Back, Sick Lit Magazine, Dying Dahlia Review, Sisyphus Quarterly, Paradox, TimBookTu, Babbling of the Irrational, Scarlet Leaf Review, SPINE, Tuck Magazine, La Libertad, Tiny Poetry, Indiana Voice Journal, and many others. A number of her poems have been printed in the anthologies, The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker (by great weather for MEDIA), Where the Mind Dwells, American Poet, Dandelion in A Vase of Roses, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze and The Literacy Review NYU, vol.15. She is the author of "Street of the Ginkgo Trees", and the translator and editor of anthologies like "Voice of Monarch Butterflies" (Middle Eastern Anthology by Ten Poets from Ganges to Nile), "Apple Fruits of an Old Oak", and the bilingual anthologies “Where Are You From?”, "Persian Sugar in English Tea Vol I, II, III" in Persian and English.

 

Her micro-poems are daily updating on her Twitter @SSaeidnia

 

A number of her poems are routinely posted through her weblog: https://soodabehpoems.wordpress.com

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soodabeh.saeidnia

 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soodabeh-