ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several newly translated Persian-language poems written in the aftermath of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021 and shared on social media by refugees from Afghanistan. While specific to the particularities of this historical moment, these works illuminate several broader developments in Afghan refugee poetry in the Persian language of the past several decades. Firstly, they emphasize the extent to which Afghan refugees’ experiences have been intertwined with poetry as their longest-standing, most portable, and most durable artistic tradition, and as a means of continuous critique, reflection, world-building, and intervention in social life. Secondly, they highlight the current importance of social media as an avenue for the circulation of Afghan refugee poetry and for the construction of Afghan diasporic publics. I explore poetry as a form of public reaction to and witnessing of cataclysmic political events like the Taliban takeover almost as quickly as they unfold in Afghanistan, as well as its ability to crystallize affective diasporic publics through the recollection of past collective trauma, especially in the case of Hazara refugees. I survey and draw on recent scholarship on Afghan refugee literature, finding particular inspiration in the theories of borderland literatures and subjectivities, which vividly illuminate the inner dislocations involved in fleeing across international borders.
