Martin Foroz

I’m Martin Foroz born in 1964 in Tehran, Iran, and taught at the university for 15 years there before I moved to Oman in 2014 as an expatriate professor of English Language and Literature. I joined STAGE32 because I love dramatic arts especially scriptwriting, and would like to connect with authors, scriptwriters, filmmakers, and producers who are looking for experimental and speculative texts. I am a diaspora writer- one of those who have left their homeland for different reasons, reasons that have "made all the difference."
I earned BA and MA degrees in English Literature and a Ph.D. in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). However, my favorite subjects from early school years were Philosophy and Literature, and the passion for thinking, writing, observing, reflecting has been with me for the past 50 years- Oh yes, I’m 56 now. And if you are also wondering whether I have been writing in English or Farsi or both, I’ll say Both! I hold a Sapirian view of language-thought theory and that’s why some of my ink is in Farsi and others in English. I value “meaning” in every sense of the term, and the role that ‘meaning’ plays in human thoughts and interactions as well as in literature and philosophy was the strong incentive for me to author a reference on semantics titled An Illustrative Dictionary of Semantics- ILLUDS (2019). Apart from my publications in language teaching areas, my poems have appeared in several literary anthologies and journals as well as in my collections of poems (in the order of publication year) Inside Out (2017), Out Inside (2019), and A Louvre of Verse (2020). The themes of the poems vary from childhood, Nature, and Love, to women and child abuse, war and terrorism, diaspora and displacement, political and ideological clashes, racism, censorship, the quest for freedom of thought and speech, and the like of that. In "A Louvre of Verse", I intended to accompany my reader on a journey to the classics of English and American poetry: poems that sound like debates or dramatic monologs addressing the classical and modern poets with a look at their masterpieces quoted in my lines. The book also includes my two verse dramas titled “The Confessing Song of Mr. Head” with a look at T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock and “The Fourth Character” in which the lead character rehearses Four Quartets in full at certain intervals. Some of my video poems as well as the audio drama “The Confessing Song” are available on my YouTube Page. More about my publications, favorite quotes, video lectures, etc. are accessible from my website. Both links are given below.
My recent short story “A Room for a Decent Burial of Memories” (to be published in 34th Parallel MAgazine) invites the readers with a philosophical bent to engage in the mental dilemma of the main character who is trying to unfold the mystery of her life from birth to the moment she has taken refuge to a blue Hawaiian Cocktail.

I love nature, traveling, and getting to know people and cultures; I always look for interpretive literature, plays, and films.