Contemporary Afghan women's poetry is divided into two languages and two styles: Dari and Pashto and the ghazal (lyrical poem) and landays (the short ones, a series of couplets). Despite this linguistic and stylistic divide, the thematic content of the poetry remains the same as women articulate through a chain of laments in their native tongues a narrative of the last 40 years of war and gender oppression in Afghanistan.

A large volume of the contemporary poetry written by Afghan women in Dari is composed outside the borders of Afghanistan in neighboring Iran. Da…