Martin Foroz (Mohammad Forouzani) was born on the 30th of December 1964 in Tehran, Iran. He holds BA and MA degrees in English Literature and a Ph.D. degree in TEFL. He has been a faculty member at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Nizwa, Oman, since 2015.
For more than 20 years now, he has been teaching and supervising theses in both fields. This was an incentive for him to compile a book for Farsi speakers on how to write MA theses and Ph.D. dissertations (چگونه پایان نامه کارشناسی ارشد و دکترای خود را به رشته تحریر در آوریم؟) published by Jungle Publications:
Along the same line, he and his colleagues translated Vernon Hall’s A Short History of Literary Criticism (تاریخچه نقد ادبی) into Persian to help MA students write their theses in the area of English Literature. The book was published by Rahnama Publications:
However, his literary and philosophical bent formed his poetic sense much earlier- at the beginning of secondary school. He insatiably read Persian Literature (his first language) and wrote poems and pieces of prose since he was in high school. His first collection of Persian poems under the title Khaste-tar az zaman (More Tired Than Time) was published in 1997 when he was a Lecturer of English. He continued writing poems, satires, and social critiques in Persian and since late 2013, he decided to organize his English notes and sketches into verse.
His collection of English poems soon increased in size, and he chose the pen name Martin Foroz, and signed the poems under his pen name. Martin is the true him which delicately unfolds in some of his poems that reflect his personal beliefs as well as his experiences as an expatriate.
Martin was deeply moved by the war news from around the world so much that most of his late-2016 poems addressed refugees, war crimes, terrorism and terrorist groups, and the victims of violence-the civilians- mostly due to conflicts in and clashes of ideologies.
His poems cover a variety of themes (nature, love, philosophy, religion, and faith, etc.), but the recurrent themes in his early works include the mind-heart relationship, the poet and his Muse, and Metapoetry- the concept he introduced in his poems first in late 2016. Inside Out and Out Inside are Martin’s first and second collections of poems. He writes mostly in free verse but in his third collection A Louvre of Verse, he has produced pieces of rhymed poetry and verse dramas as tributes to the classical and modern English and American poets from the 17th to the 20th century. He has drawn on English and American Poetry in the form of quotations and allusions.
Martin also writes short stories in both English and Persian. His English short story “A Room for a Decent Burial of Memories” was published in 34th Parallel Magazine (Issue 80, 2020):
His collection of Persian short stories titled Narrator’s Memories (خاطرات راوی) was published by Forough Book Publication in Germany:
Martin’s individual poems have appeared in the following anthologies and magazines:
Forouzani, M. (2019). “Cubism”. Praxis Magazine. October Issue. http://www.praxismagonline.com/cubism-by-martin-foroz/
Forouzani, M. (2019). «Popping Past». Realistic Poetry International: The Valiant, United Edition
IV, p. 31.
Forouzani, M (2017). “Child of War.” The Tower Journal.
http://www.towerjournal.com/fall_2017/poetry/foroz.php
Forouzani, M. (2017). Selected Poems. “Three Sheets to the Wind” and “A
Legendary Light”. Mystical Muse Magazine, 5 (19), 15-16.
https://sites.google.com/view/mysticalmusepoetrymagazine/home
Forouzani, M. (2017). Selected Poems. “A Pendulum in Time”, “His Society” and
“Beginning of an End”. Amulet Magazine, 14 (139 & 140), 13-15.
https://sites.google.com/view/mysticalmusepoetrymagazine/home
Forouzani, M. (2017). A Poem: “No language but feelings”. The Stray Branch, 17
(20), 100-102.
https://www.createspace.com/7606388
http://www.thestraybranch.org/current-issue/features-ss-2017/contributors/martin-foroz-fw-2017/
Forouzani, M. (2017). A Poem: “Mending Soul”. The Criterion: An International
Journal in English Vol.8, Issue-II April 2017 http://www.the-criterion.com/;
http://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n2/PO26.pdf
Forouzani, M. (2017). 3 poems in Literature without Borders: Rhythm of Peace.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XW967XX?ref_=dbs_s_def_rwt_dirs_l_0&storeType=ebooks
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems. Scarlet Leaf Review. October 2016 issue. http://www.scarletleafreview.com/octpoems2016/category/martin-foroz
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems. Peacock Journal. October 2016 issue.
http://peacockjournal.com/martin-foroz-two-poems/
Forouzani, M. (2016). A poem: Bed. In Poetry Life & Times.
http://www.artvilla.com/plt/bed-a-poem-by-martin-foroz/
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems. Daath Voyage: An International
Disciplinary Journal in English Studies. (September 2016 Issue).
http://www.daathvoyagejournal.com/current-issue.html
http://www.daathvoyagejournal.com/imagebag/image102.pdf
http://www.daathvoyagejournal.com/imagebag/image103.pdf
http://www.daathvoyagejournal.com/imagebag/image104.pdf
Forouzani, M. (2016). A poem: Darkness. In The Poet Community.
http://www.thepoetcommunity.com/8708/darkness-a-poem-by-mohammad-forouzani-martin-foroz
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems in Raven Cage Ezine.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxZwlfw5nFrXQnJUTWczY1BPdlU/view?usp=sharing
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems in Tuck Magazine.
http://tuckmagazine.com/2016/08/11/poetry-478/
Forouzani, M. (2016). Selected poems. In Soudabeh Saeidnia (Ed.). Voices of
Monarch Butterflies: Middle Eastern Anthology by Ten Poets from Ganges to
Nile (pp. 22-34). USA: Createspace.
https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Monarch-Butterflies-Eastern Anthology/dp/1533565198
Forouzani, M. (2016). Foreword to Street of the Gingko Tress: a contemporary poetry collection. Soodabeh Saeidnia. CreateSpace, US.
https://www.amazon.com/Street-Ginkgo-Trees-contemporary-collection/dp/1530556988
As an English Language and Linguistics professor, Martin’s areas of interest and practice include critical pedagogy, linguistics, and semantics. His Illustrative Dictionary of Semantics (ILLUDS, in press) is a rich companion to semantic concepts, issues, topics, and definitions, and a user-friendly guide for semantics researchers and students of linguistics who would like to access an array of semantics topics in a single volume. More than one-hundred references were used in collecting and organizing headwords and explanations in this illustrative dictionary, and users can easily refer to said references for detailed explanations.
Martin is a lover of nature, interested in photography with natural and social themes, and very much fond of traveling and learning about different cultures.