Lickos: Syllabic Poetry of the Oasis

Lickos, one of the indigenous forms of oral poetry in the Iranian plateau, are composed in the languages of the people of Roudbar and Baluchistan in the south of Kerman province in southeast Iran. Roudbar, with the population of about 700,000 people (roughly 400 million people live in the Iranian Plateau), has unique cultural-geographical characteristics. It is where the coastal culture of Hormozgan in the Persian Gulf, the Persian culture of Kerman, and the Baluchi culture of Baluchistan meet. Immigration within the plateau, combined with the limits of accessing Roudbar, has made Roudbar ethnoculturally and linguistically distinctive. People in Roudbar speak three major languages: Baluchi, Korta, and Aram Naram. Most of the Lickos in the present collection are translated from Aram Naram, a language also known as Roudbari. Roudbari has come into contact with Balouchi (the language of Balouchestan in the East) and Hormozgani (the language of Hormozgan in the West), while preserving its unique characteristics as a reason of its limited contact with official Persian spoken in Iran.

Lickos are among the oral poetry traditions of both Baluchistan and Roudbar. Both Baluchi and Roudbari Lickos are syllabic, with Roudbari Lickos consisting of five syllabuses, while Baluchi Lickos ten syllabuses. This poetic form is quite short, but rich in its cultural connotations. Its brevity calls for active participation of the reader. The name Licko, it is argued, originated from the name of a bird, indigo or brown in colour, smaller and quicker than a sparrow. This bird was very common around Roudbar, but its population is diminishing due to long periods of drought (Alimoradi, 2012).
 
Lickos are considered to be one of the shortest forms of oral poetry in the Iranian plateau; it is argued they are a continuation of pre-Islamic syllabic poems, alongside Baluchi Lickos, Afghani Landay, and Kurdish Bayt. After the Arab invasion and conversion of the majority of people in this plateau to Islam, the syllabic poetic tradition was replaced by the Arabic metric tradition as poetry came under the influence of Islamic culture.

Roudbari Lickos are commonly made up of four words, with ending rhyme. They are known by different names in Roudbar region, such as Dahu, Dahu Zahra, Dikan, Zahiruki, and Taskin. Lickos are similar to haiku, in the sense that both are syllabic, short, filled with images, and are manifestations of daily life as well as ethnic beliefs. However, the two differ in terms of their number and syllabic arrangements, the content of the ethnic beliefs each contain, and the social and natural geography of the people who have composed them. Furthermore, contrary to haiku, Lickos do not have seasonal references or the juxtaposition of images in haiku, known as cutting (kiru).

Lickos echo the lives of people in Roudbar, the lives of those living in the oasis, surrounded by the desert. They depict life in the desert with all its hardships, challenges, and failures. Lickos are the poetry of short joys and continuous hardship, and a reflection of the violence of life in nomadic social relations. They are the voice of a lover who sees his beloved for a blink in the desert, the call of a camel driver in the lonely nights of the desert on a dry path, or the mourning over the death of a young in tribal violence.

Traditionally, Lickos were recited by women, and several of them give voice to a woman or are narrated from a female point of view. Therefore, some scholars consider the form to be a kind of feminine poetry. The recitation of a Licko is commonly accompanied by musical instruments (such as Qaychak, Chang, Nei Shabani, Dunili), and at other times occurs with no musical instrument but the mesmerizing and alarming sound of the wind in the desert.

The Lickos translated here are selected from a collection by Mansour Alimoradi, a Persian-language poet from Roudbar who undertook an ethnological effort to record and translate this oral tradition into Persian. These translations are part of his wider contributions to the study of Roudbar’s poetry, folk culture, and costumes. In the English translation, we tried to introduce Roudbari Lickos to the English-speaking world. During the translation process, our goal has been to stay attentive to the original text, while bringing the cultural and social connotations of the poems into English. There are changes to the meter and rhyme of the poems, which was unavoidable due to the nature of English language. We hope that this translation gives an insight into the verse of the people of the oasis and their challenging lives and exquisite imagination in the desert.