Reading, Writing, & Translating the Persian Poetic Tradition
Explore extraordinary Persian poetics as inspiration for your own work.
Spanning a nearly 3000-year history, since its inception, the Persian language, also known as Farsi, has been inextricable from its use in poetry, lyric, and storytelling. From the ancient epic to modern free verse, the cultural and social significance of Persian poetry lives on in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and countless other contexts.
This course will be a survey of Persian poetry translated into English. We will organize our attention via five of the most significant Persian poetic traditions: the ghazal, the epic, the elegy, the ars poetica, and the romantic epistolary. Some of the poets who will guide us through this tradition are: Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyem, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Saadi Shirazi, Khajeh Shams-od-Din Mohammad Hafez-e Shirazi (also known as Hafez), Nima Yooshij, H. E. Sayeh, Ahmad Shamlou, Forugh Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, and Simin Behbahani.
As we read through these poets and write our own poems inspired by them, we will also think through what it means to read poetry in translation. What is the work of the translator? What becomes of the original when it is translated into English? And what does it mean to read a text alongside its previous, language-traversing lives? Each student will come away from this course with a deepened understanding of the Persian poetic tradition, along with a body of work conceived in conversation with the poems with which we will spend time.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image credit: @liogo
About Roz Shayan Naimi 
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Roz Shayan Naimi is a poet, translator, and editor based in New York. She received an MFA from Columbia University in poetry and literary translation. She is currently translating the complete works of Iranian modernist poet Mina Asadi, and is an editor at World Poetry Books. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Reading, Writing, & Translating the Persian Poetic Tradition
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