Chair no. 15 - Jila Mossaed

Poet.
Elected: 2018.

Jila Mossaed’s poetry resonates with the experience of exile, where the Persian literary tradition meets with the Swedish.

Jila Mossaed was born in 1948 in Tehran, where poetry was part of her life from an early age. Her father, Alaedin Mossaed, was a gnostic poet, in addition to serving as a judge. Her literary breakthrough came at the age of seventeen, when she had a number of poems published in the respected literary magazine Khoshe. She has to date published two novels and twelve collections of poetry in the Persian language. After studying in both the USA and Iran, she worked as a scriptwriter for Iranian radio and television. However, Khomeini’s seizure of power in 1979 created an increasingly harsh climate for free practitioners of culture in Iran. In 1986, the same year that she published her collection of poems, Ghazālān-i chālāk-i khātòirah (The Swift Gazelles of Memory), she fled to Sweden with her two children. While she has always focused on poetry, she has also been active in other genres. An example is the novel Īshtār (1995), a love story with double time perspectives and magical elements set in the Swedish region of Värmland.

Her first book written in Swedish was the poetry collection Månen och den eviga kon (The Moon and the Eternal Cow). Here, the Persian literary tradition, with all its imagery and references, meets themes from the poet’s everyday life in modern Sweden. A recurring theme in her poetry is exile – even on a purely linguistic level. In her own words: ‘To write in the language of exile is to create a small space in the memory of that country. It is a great triumph to become part of the literary history of a foreign country.’ Central to Mossaed’s writing is also the fight against injustice and censorship, and she has been highly active in the Iranian struggle for freedom.

Her 2009 collection Varje natt kysser jag markens fötter (Every Night I Kiss the Feet of the Ground) heralded a more direct form of address to the reader compared to her previous work. The first part of a trilogy, it was followed by Ett ljud som bara jag kan (A Sound That Only I Know, 2012) and Jag föder rädjuret (I Feed the Deer, 2015). Her latest poetry collections are Vad jag saknades här (How I Was Missed Here, 2018), Åttonde landet (The Eighth Land, 2020) and Orden är försenade (The Words Are Delayed, 2021). The short lines in these works create condensed, metaphor-laden stories rooted in classical Persian poetry and mythology. It has been commented that they are easy to read but difficult to let go.

In the autumn of 2018, Jila Mossaed and director Rebecca Örtman’s play Upprorets poet (The Poet of the Uprising) was staged at the Gothenburg City Theatre. The play, which is also available in book form, is about the life and work of the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad. In 2024 she published the collection Jag tillhörde vindarna (I Belonged to the Winds) and in 2025 Vem var min mor på jorden (Who was my Mother on Earth). The latter contains both new poems and a selection from Mossaed's previous books.

Jila Mossaed has been awarded a long list of literary prizes and awards, including the Karl Vennberg Prize, the Erik Lindegren Prize, the ABF Literature Prize, the Aftonbladet Literature Prize and Le Prix Max Jacob. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, including French, Dutch and modern Greek. In the recently released The Dusk of Exile (2026), Mojdeh Bahar has translated her poems into English

In 2018, she succeeded the author Kerstin Ekman on chair number 15 of the Swedish Academy.