As the base, he uses the traditional imagery familiar to his Iranian audience through the works of Persian masters like Hafez and Omar Khayyám.

His thirteen-volume Ketab-e Koucheh (The Book of Alley) is a major contribution in understanding the Iranian folklore beliefs and language.

In the manner of many children who grow up in families with military parents, he received his early education in various towns, including Khash and Zahedan in the southeast of Iran, and Mashhad in the northeast, and Rasht in the north.

Shamlou's childhood and adolescence were neither privileged nor easy and home was not an environment that could foster his sensitivities and he often found solace in solitude.

At age 29, following the fall of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, Shamlou was arrested for being a member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran and imprisoned for more than one year.

I, an Iranian poet, first learned poetry from the Spanish Lorca, the frenchman Éluard, the German Rilke, the Russian Mayakovsky [...] and the American Langston Hughes; and only later, with this education I turned to the poems of my mother tongue to see and to know, say, the grandeur of Hafez from a fresh perspective.

Shamlou's debut work, Forgotten Songs (Persian: آهنگ‌های فراموش شده), was a collection of classical and modern poetry which was published in 1947 with an introduction of Ebrahim Dilmaghanian.

Two years later, his first short story, "The Woman Behind the Brass Door" (Persian: زن پشت در مفرغی), was published.

His translations of Gold in Dirt, by Sigmund Motritz, and the voluminous novel The Heartless Man's Sons by Mór Jókai, together with all data gathered for his work on the colloquial culture of urban Iranian life (to be known as The Book Of Alley) were also confiscated and destroyed.

Zia Movahed, poet and philosopher commented that "Anyone who reads Fresh Air today can see that this language, this texture, is different from anything else.

In 1966, another new collection of poems was published, called Phoenix in the Rain, and his literary magazine was banned by the Ministry of Information (SAVAK).

Shamlou connects his poem to the collective consciousness of the whole world, presenting characters of the hero and even the social scapegoat rather in a curious way as we read about the case of a man who sacrifices himself for land and love and, yet, who is betrayed by others due to their ignorance and biases.

He left Iran in protest of the Shah's regime and stayed in the United States for a year, giving lectures in American universities.

In 1978, he left the United States for Britain to act as the editor-in-chief for a new publication called Iranshahr; he resigned after 12 issues and returned to Iran just after the advent of the revolution.

He rejoined the Union of Iranian Writers and began publishing a new periodical, Ketab-e Jom'e to great success.

Starting in 1980, owing to the harsh political situation in his country, he led a rather secluded life that would last for the next eight years, working with Ayda on The Book Of Alley, as well as many other literary endeavors, including a translation of And Quiet Flows The Don by Mikhail Sholokhov.

In 1994, he toured Sweden, invited by his Swedish editor Masoud Dehghani Firouzabadi, giving numerous lectures and readings.

There was a special gathering in Toronto of Iranian writers and critics to discuss Shamlou's contribution to Persian poetry.

He just lived and his life and words scattered through the minds and hearts of several generations of Iranian humanists and liberals, giving them hope, faith and aspiration.

Ahmad Shamlou's poetic vision accords with both western Modernist concepts and the modern transformation of classical Persian poetry.

One of the disciples of Nima Youshij, Shamlou, standing among the generation who adopted his techniques, constantly sought untried ways, new poetic realms.

He quickly became the flag bearer of young Iranian poets and writers that included Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Mehdi Akhavan Sales, Yadollah Roya’i, Nosrat Rahmani, and Nader Naderpour.

Shamlou's poems are filled with mythological concepts and symbols to glorify seemingly simple and ordinary figures who are politically condemned for their revolutionary beliefs that, regardless of governmental suppression, actually reflect the activists’ deep love of their nation and people.

Even though his focus is the purity of such individuals, many of whom were his close friends, Shamlou writes his elegiac poems boldly, and does not hold back from criticizing and denouncing hypocrisy and cruelty of his society.

In 1977, one year before the collapse of the Shah's Regime, he signed an open letter which supported the rights of gathering for members of The Writers Association of Iran.

The composer had tried to obtain the permission to release this CD in Iran as well, but due to ban of solo female singing, the permit had not been issued.

[18][19] The British journal Opera writes: "with lyrics such as ‘everybody sing and dance/ this is a real person’s chance’, ‘darkness away, devils die!’... it's not hard to fathom why the work has been banned in Iran for three decades.

"[20] Abraham in Flames ابراهیم در آتش,[21] an opera created by Niloufar Talebi with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and director Roy Rallo, world premiered on May 9–12, 2019 at San Francisco's Z Space as an immersive performance.