December 1, 2023
The Tehran police aren’t happy with poetic signs the city is putting on overpasses, saying they distract drivers and cause traffic accidents.
The Tehran municipality has put up some 600 billboards displaying excerpts from the work of contemporary Iranian poets on overhead pedestrian and traffic bridges across the city.
The neat calligraphy features the work of 104 poets and covers multiple topics, including romance, religion and society.
However, a report by the state television-linked Young Journalists Club (YJC) released October 30 said police find the poems have been a source of distraction to drivers in the traffic-choked city because of their length and often “hard-to-read text,” which “causes accidents.”
“Billboards around the city should be short and concise, and able to convey the message with just a short glance by the driver,” YJC quoted Tehran’s deputy traffic police chief Ehsan Momeni as saying. “This type of lengthy text does not conform to the standard and causes accidents.”
While hailing the poetry initiative as “valuable,” a Tehran municipality official acknowledged that it would be “preferable to shorten the poems, as advised by the police.”
The campaign has also drawn criticism from conservatives for displaying a portrait of feminist poet Forough Farrokh-zad, known for her explicitly erotic work, who is shown not wearing a headscarf. Municipality spokesperson Alireza Nadali said it had been impossible to find a portrait of Farrokhzad wearing a hejab. She died in 1967 at the age of 32.
