1 00:00:07,950 --> 00:00:19,680 While the appetite for poetry in many modern cultures has dwindled into antiquity, poetry remains at the core of Iranian life and governance. 2 00:00:19,680 --> 00:00:26,040 The people of Iran encounter poetry every day in newspapers, classrooms, religious sermons, 3 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:33,960 political broadcasts, advertising billboards, television and radio, as well as in the home. 4 00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:39,570 Poetry is so embedded within Iran's ruling structures and political thought that it has 5 00:00:39,570 --> 00:00:47,010 become almost impossible to separate from the rhetoric of power over the past four decades. 6 00:00:47,010 --> 00:00:53,340 Both leaders of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei are poets in their own right. 7 00:00:53,340 --> 00:01:01,200 Much is yet to be written about the influence of poetry in the romanticisation of political thought in Iran, 8 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:08,640 as has been explored in other cultures such as Soviet Russia, Franco's Spain, Castro's Cuba or Italy, 9 00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:16,570 under Mussolini, where the role of the poet tyrant has been so critically investigated. 10 00:01:16,570 --> 00:01:22,330 Welcome to Middle East Centre Book Talk. The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East. 11 00:01:22,330 --> 00:01:27,910 These are some of the books written by members of our community or the books our community are talking about. 12 00:01:27,910 --> 00:01:31,810 My name is Zuzannah Olszewska and I teach the social anthropology of the Middle East, 13 00:01:31,810 --> 00:01:36,250 particularly Iran, with a particular interest in literary production. 14 00:01:36,250 --> 00:01:42,780 My guest is Fatemeh Shams, Assistant Professor of modern Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, 15 00:01:42,780 --> 00:01:52,450 Fatemeh earned her DPhil in Oriental Studies at Oxford under the supervision of Homa Katouzian and Edmund Herzig and in 2016. 16 00:01:52,450 --> 00:01:55,570 She then taught Persian language and literature at the University of Oxford. 17 00:01:55,570 --> 00:02:01,060 SOAS and the Courtauld Institute of Art before joining the University of Pennsylvania. 18 00:02:01,060 --> 00:02:07,810 She is herself an award winning poet who has published three collections of poetry in Persian and English. From 19 00:02:07,810 --> 00:02:16,120 May 2021 until July 2022 Fatemeh will be a Humboldt Fellow and an EU ME Affiliate residing in Berlin. 20 00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:24,820 Embarking on her second book, Project on Imprisonment, Exile and Precarious Modes of Writing in Persian Tradition, her much anticipated book, 21 00:02:24,820 --> 00:02:29,290 A Revolution in Rhyme Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic, 22 00:02:29,290 --> 00:02:35,530 was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press as part of the Oxford Oriental Monograph Series. 23 00:02:35,530 --> 00:02:41,230 Its unique and highly original in addressing the output of the postrevolutionary Iranian poets, 24 00:02:41,230 --> 00:02:47,050 whom she calls official poets because they've been supported in various ways by the State but who 25 00:02:47,050 --> 00:02:54,000 until now have been dismissed as aesthetically unimportant and largely neglected outside of Iran. 26 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:59,230 Fatemeh, welcome to BookTalk and welcome back to the Middle East Centre community. 27 00:02:59,230 --> 00:03:05,810 Can you tell us about the role that the Oxford intellectual milieu played in the writing of this book? 28 00:03:05,810 --> 00:03:16,360 Hi, Zuzanna. It's a pleasure and honour to be here in conversation with you and also to be back to the Middle East Centre, 29 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:23,360 and St Anthony's College, which was my first college when I first arrived in Oxford. 30 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:35,280 So, those were the good, good old days. You know, I, if I want to start answering your question about how Oxford milieu, 31 00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:43,430 and intellectual community, shaped my scholarship and also who I am today as a scholar, 32 00:03:43,430 --> 00:03:58,350 I should really start with the Clarendon Fund and the fact that it gave me the opportunity to pursue a PhD in the first place. 33 00:03:58,350 --> 00:04:07,330 But more methodically, if I want to highlight some of the most important thing, takeaways from Oxford 34 00:04:07,330 --> 00:04:13,290 time, for me was basically to rethink the relationship between the old and new one I would 35 00:04:13,290 --> 00:04:18,480 say, that in order to make sense of the new, 36 00:04:18,480 --> 00:04:26,220 you always have to look back at the past and you don't have to completely break from the past in order to create something new. 37 00:04:26,220 --> 00:04:32,600 I think that was something that was extremely important and inspiring to me. 38 00:04:32,600 --> 00:04:38,680 You know, came out of many conversations with my mentors, 39 00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:49,530 Homa Katouzian and Edmund Herzig and, and also, you know, my friends, including yourself and you know. 40 00:04:49,530 --> 00:04:53,220 One thing that also I think was very important was this 41 00:04:53,220 --> 00:04:58,440 untouched. Going for the untouched and undiscovered and neglected. 42 00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:09,570 And tried to look for the nuances instead of constantly repeating what is already, what has already been said. 43 00:05:09,570 --> 00:05:15,630 Another thing that I think was very important was, for me especially, to come to 44 00:05:15,630 --> 00:05:21,510 realise the importance and significance of history and historical knowledge. 45 00:05:21,510 --> 00:05:25,740 I always had this, I don't know if it's a joke, 46 00:05:25,740 --> 00:05:32,880 but I always used to tell my friends that it's impossible to go to Oxford to study humanities and not become an historian. 47 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:38,800 At some point you realise that you are a historian before you are a literary critic or you are 48 00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:41,400 an, you are an anthropologist or sociologist, 49 00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:54,060 or really like any anything in humanities goes back to history and you have to go back to the past in order to shape your thoughts and your ideas. 50 00:05:54,060 --> 00:05:58,710 And you know, the interpretation of this past also, I would say it was something that, 51 00:05:58,710 --> 00:06:05,370 you know, that sort of the ways in which you look at this past and try to make sense of it. 52 00:06:05,370 --> 00:06:08,550 And of course, that privilege of working with wonderful scholars, 53 00:06:08,550 --> 00:06:18,090 meeting the people that you simply don't get to meet in other, you know, contexts, Oxford is really unique in that sense. 54 00:06:18,090 --> 00:06:20,070 And the last thing I would say, 55 00:06:20,070 --> 00:06:29,670 the beautiful libraries in which you could just hide for hours every day and get inspired by the beautiful architecture and the old books. 56 00:06:29,670 --> 00:06:35,190 You know, that always kept me thinking and rethinking and writing and rewriting. 57 00:06:35,190 --> 00:06:46,270 So I would say that the physicality of the place itself was also very inspiring and special. 58 00:06:46,270 --> 00:06:50,230 Well, it's absolutely wonderful to be able to welcome you back virtually. 59 00:06:50,230 --> 00:06:59,590 And it's an honour to have this conversation with you. So we've just passed the 42 anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran. 60 00:06:59,590 --> 00:07:02,050 But as you make clear in the introduction of your book, 61 00:07:02,050 --> 00:07:10,390 your book is the first to address this vast body of poetry that's been produced under various forms of state sponsorship in the Islamic Republic, 62 00:07:10,390 --> 00:07:16,570 as well as the first to focus on the close relationship between poetry and power through these mechanisms. 63 00:07:16,570 --> 00:07:22,340 Why do you think it's taken so long for someone to try to fill this gap? 64 00:07:22,340 --> 00:07:30,830 Yeah, that's a, that's a very important and wonderful question. I actually elaborate on this in the introduction of the book as well. 65 00:07:30,830 --> 00:07:39,020 That one of the reasons for this gap, I think has been the lack of contact with the post revolutionary Iran by those 66 00:07:39,020 --> 00:07:46,250 scholars who whose work actually has shaped and sort of defined fields outside, 67 00:07:46,250 --> 00:07:55,040 Iran, you know, excessive purges and forceful involuntary integrations that happened right after, 68 00:07:55,040 --> 00:08:01,190 especially the first decade after the revolution caused many of his followers to leave home. 69 00:08:01,190 --> 00:08:08,660 And sort of lose contact with Iran and simply not being able to be physically present. 70 00:08:08,660 --> 00:08:17,210 And this, you know, had a really important impact on the production of the scolarship outside Iran. 71 00:08:17,210 --> 00:08:21,440 This is not to say that nobody has worked on postrevolutionary literature. 72 00:08:21,440 --> 00:08:31,020 And I make it very clear in the book, that we have, in fact, invaluable body of research on postrevolutionary prose and even poetry. 73 00:08:31,020 --> 00:08:37,010 But, you know, they mostly have been, have been focussing on, or are focussed on 74 00:08:37,010 --> 00:08:48,440 those authors and poets who held a very critical approach against the State or have been simply neutral and independent. 75 00:08:48,440 --> 00:08:56,570 And in other words, the emphasis has been always on the resistance and the defiance rather than conformity and ideology. 76 00:08:56,570 --> 00:09:06,110 And I try to break this binary and complicate it in the book by showing that even those who adhere to a certain ideology, 77 00:09:06,110 --> 00:09:16,490 being the ideology of the state, questioned it at some point and it's not, it's not as sort of black and white that we imagine. 78 00:09:16,490 --> 00:09:24,400 So this new generation of scholars who grew up in Iran and were educated under the Islamic Republic, including myself, 79 00:09:24,400 --> 00:09:29,300 we have a different experience and view of how the system really works. 80 00:09:29,300 --> 00:09:37,460 You know, we, I mean, I personally was exposed to exposed to poetry from a very young age, both at home and at school. 81 00:09:37,460 --> 00:09:43,910 And there was always this divide between the school textbooks and what I found in my 82 00:09:43,910 --> 00:09:50,210 mother's underground library that had offset publications of the pre-revolutionary period. 83 00:09:50,210 --> 00:09:56,410 And then, you know, the overground library that had different kinds of books. 84 00:09:56,410 --> 00:10:07,040 So being exposed to all of these different, you know, dimensions of, of Persian poetry, I suppose was extremely important since very young age. 85 00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:17,110 And soon I found myself in the poetry circles of Mashhad, which is one of the most thriving cities as far as poetry is concerned. 86 00:10:17,110 --> 00:10:27,560 You know, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I started going to this poetry circle with a friend of mine at the high school, at high school. 87 00:10:27,560 --> 00:10:39,200 And soon I realised that there is that there is definitely a divide where you can read certain poetry and you can't read certain poems. 88 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:49,100 And there was this constant, you know, tension. I would call it a tension, that I was trying to make sense of. 89 00:10:49,100 --> 00:10:54,490 I was quite unable to do that. Not at that age. 90 00:10:54,490 --> 00:10:58,060 And then later on, when I entered Tehran University, 91 00:10:58,060 --> 00:11:07,300 I became more aware of this extensive purging that happened in the past and they were happening at that time. 92 00:11:07,300 --> 00:11:13,450 And also the State-sponsored book industry, really, that constantly tried to weave a different literary history, 93 00:11:13,450 --> 00:11:23,020 different canonization and re-canonization of poetry. And then I left Iran and I, you know, started working on this project. 94 00:11:23,020 --> 00:11:29,210 One of the things that came to my attention was that this particular phenomenon, 95 00:11:29,210 --> 00:11:41,560 this you know, book-making industry and sort of canonization and recanonization of poetry has been completely dismissed and nobody has really picked up on it. 96 00:11:41,560 --> 00:11:46,300 There were, you know, articles and book chapters here and there. 97 00:11:46,300 --> 00:11:56,850 But none of them really tried to contextualise this particular phenomenon, especially in conversation with the past literary tradition. 98 00:11:56,850 --> 00:12:02,740 That was also part of my interests. So, yeah. 99 00:12:02,740 --> 00:12:09,700 Yes, just to pick up on that. I mean, what what do you think accounts for the, not so much the neglect because you mentioned that, 100 00:12:09,700 --> 00:12:18,310 but the fact that the aesthetic aspect of this official poetry seems to have been downright distasteful to so many critics outside Iran. 101 00:12:18,310 --> 00:12:26,110 Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a very important question to address. 102 00:12:26,110 --> 00:12:32,710 I tried to address this in the book as well, that, you know, there is this tendency amongst the critics, especially those outside Iran, 103 00:12:32,710 --> 00:12:41,860 and also, you know, independent critics inside Iran, that there is this tendency for aesthetics that I would call high literature, 104 00:12:41,860 --> 00:12:50,260 that simply ignoring the fact that poetry and literature has also other functions in the society. 105 00:12:50,260 --> 00:12:54,660 I did, you know, I studied sociology 106 00:12:54,660 --> 00:13:04,440 at Tehran University after a year off being at the Department of Literature and being disillusioned by the whole way of, 107 00:13:04,440 --> 00:13:08,630 you know, the way that literature was addressed and taught. 108 00:13:08,630 --> 00:13:19,270 And I think that sociological background really helped me to rethink the relationship between poetry and society. 109 00:13:19,270 --> 00:13:23,590 And for me, the fact that poetry could be also an art of persuasion, 110 00:13:23,590 --> 00:13:28,300 dissemination of ideology, brainwashing, training a new revolutionary generation. 111 00:13:28,300 --> 00:13:31,090 All of this work was also very important. 112 00:13:31,090 --> 00:13:42,760 And, you know, once you, once you put those in priority, the aesthetic dimension finds a different, different meanings, different meaning. 113 00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:45,550 Why is it is distasteful to many critics? 114 00:13:45,550 --> 00:13:55,380 I think, as you know, as a result of that, anything that is ideologically charged and also considered as too political, 115 00:13:55,380 --> 00:14:02,020 a political and ideological for the taste of the scholars, has been dismissed. 116 00:14:02,020 --> 00:14:13,510 And then there is the sloganeering aspect of poetry that, you know, poetry is shared or the poetry is a slogan or vice versa. 117 00:14:13,510 --> 00:14:24,670 And as soon as it's mass, you know, it's becoming a tool for mass mobilisation, which literally became that during the war with Iraq, 118 00:14:24,670 --> 00:14:29,620 Then it's, you know, it's not worth our time and our attention. 119 00:14:29,620 --> 00:14:38,470 For me, in fact, this very aspect of revolutionary or what I call Islamic Republican poetry was very 120 00:14:38,470 --> 00:14:45,280 interesting. How rhythm and rhyme actually were used in the political sphere. 121 00:14:45,280 --> 00:14:50,440 Another reason, I think, for their dismissal is their ties, their very close ties with the State. 122 00:14:50,440 --> 00:15:00,040 I think it played a very important role in their othering. You know, there is a political divide, whether it we, we like it or not, 123 00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:07,360 between the scholars outside Iran, those who work in the humanities for the most part, 124 00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:10,840 and, and, you know, the Islamic Republic. 125 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:21,820 So whoever works for the government, with the government, especially literary people, they are just simply considered as bad poets by default. 126 00:15:21,820 --> 00:15:24,970 But this is simply not true. 127 00:15:24,970 --> 00:15:33,070 And, you know, I tried in the book and to complicate this approach, and that many of them, in fact, knew the poetic tradition pretty well. 128 00:15:33,070 --> 00:15:37,930 We might not like the way they write and we might not agree with their ideology, 129 00:15:37,930 --> 00:15:45,490 but that doesn't mean that they are completely illiterate or unaware of, you know, this tradition. 130 00:15:45,490 --> 00:15:54,880 In fact, they are deeply aware of it. And that's why they were capable of co-opting so well, which is something that, you know, 131 00:15:54,880 --> 00:16:02,760 I think the contribution of this book to the field is really to show that, how this co-option has 132 00:16:02,760 --> 00:16:10,620 taken place. Another thing, I think there is this, again, which has to do with what I already said, 133 00:16:10,620 --> 00:16:18,780 this demoralising approach to, not just the revolution of the Islamic Republic, but also Islam to some extent I would say. 134 00:16:18,780 --> 00:16:24,480 I tried to, you know, in the book to show that Islam really means different things to all of these poets. 135 00:16:24,480 --> 00:16:38,010 I start the book with an ode by a poet who was then later on after the Revolution, exiled, persecuted and exiled by the Islamic Republic. 136 00:16:38,010 --> 00:16:48,180 This poet is one of the first pioneering voices of this very trend that later on was promoted to officialdom after the revolution, 137 00:16:48,180 --> 00:17:03,160 Nemat Azarm. And I think, you know, complicating this binary, which was really something that I was hoping to do in the book, 138 00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:09,740 we challenged the pigeonholing approach, of calling these people Islamists. 139 00:17:09,740 --> 00:17:19,760 People who, you know, if you look at what has been already produced, these poets have been constantly called Islamist poets. 140 00:17:19,760 --> 00:17:28,590 I think there is a difference between Islamist and Islamic Republican. And I think that's what I was trying to do in the book. 141 00:17:28,590 --> 00:17:37,010 And, you know, the fact that many of these poets, they're allies with the censors and with the Islamic Republic itself and played a 142 00:17:37,010 --> 00:17:42,740 role in the system and their poetry and for this reason doesn't deserve attention, 143 00:17:42,740 --> 00:17:48,080 I think, I think this is something that had to be addressed and challenged. 144 00:17:48,080 --> 00:17:54,860 And I tried to do that in the book. Yes, I think I mean, that was one of the things I really appreciated about your book, 145 00:17:54,860 --> 00:18:03,020 and that I found so striking, that you demonstrated so carefully that contrary to what we might assume, there was such incredible diversity, 146 00:18:03,020 --> 00:18:11,450 both in aesthetic and in ideological terms among the State-sponsored poets, the Islamic Republican or official poets that you describe. 147 00:18:11,450 --> 00:18:20,510 And so in this way, you refute earlier episodic approaches to Persian literary history, which tended to group poets according to their time period. 148 00:18:20,510 --> 00:18:26,630 And you argue very pointedly that poetry neither started nor stopped in 1979. 149 00:18:26,630 --> 00:18:36,260 So what lessons do you think that literary critics and historians should take away from your book regarding the most useful ways to classify poets? 150 00:18:36,260 --> 00:18:39,310 Yes, thank you for that question again. 151 00:18:39,310 --> 00:18:48,860 These are all very important observations and thank you for reading the book and also for these wonderful questions. 152 00:18:48,860 --> 00:18:52,180 One thing I forgot to mention in response to your previous question, 153 00:18:52,180 --> 00:18:59,330 which I think is also relevant to what you just asked, is that one thing I really learnt during my time in Oxford, 154 00:18:59,330 --> 00:19:02,910 and this was thanks to my supervisor Edmund Herzig, 155 00:19:02,910 --> 00:19:12,290 was that he really pushed me to go for reading texts and sources about Bolshevik Russia, and the Bolshevik revolution. 156 00:19:12,290 --> 00:19:21,520 And I, you know, although this work is not in any way a comparative study, I think, 157 00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:24,740 there is you know, I have used different different examples, 158 00:19:24,740 --> 00:19:34,390 but mostly the example of Russia to show that Iran is really not the first, and is not willing to be the last country that, 159 00:19:34,390 --> 00:19:40,720 you know, poetry was in this country was tied to the Revolution and poets were tied to the Revolution. 160 00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:53,770 And also, you know, the complicated process of becoming parts of the revolutionary sort of movement and then later on becoming disillusioned by it. 161 00:19:53,770 --> 00:19:59,410 This is something that happened in the case of Bolshevik Russia and I tried to address this in the book and 162 00:19:59,410 --> 00:20:07,910 I'm hoping that this opens the field really for further enquiries and research by other scholars 163 00:20:07,910 --> 00:20:12,850 also, to look for the parallels and try to put Iran on the map, 164 00:20:12,850 --> 00:20:20,020 rather than just looking at Iran as, as this isolated place that, you know, just falls into the area of studies 165 00:20:20,020 --> 00:20:34,150 and there's nothing really in common between this and other examples, as far as poetry is concerned, and relationship, sorry, revolution and ideologies. 166 00:20:34,150 --> 00:20:43,820 Another thing that I was hoping to, you know, going back to your question about the episodic approach is that 167 00:20:43,820 --> 00:20:53,990 I tried to show that basically the relationship with the poetic tradition is something that we should also look at, 168 00:20:53,990 --> 00:21:00,510 that each poet has his or her own way of connecting with the past 169 00:21:00,510 --> 00:21:05,310 and, you know, in today's Iran, even the government has its own take on this politic tradition. 170 00:21:05,310 --> 00:21:10,550 We have after the revolution, we have this, you know, 171 00:21:10,550 --> 00:21:19,000 new wave of interpreters and critics who are aligned by the State and they are giving their own interpretation of Hafez 172 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:28,700 for example, Morteza Motahhari's book on Tafsir-e Hafez and his interpretation of Hafez is one of them. 173 00:21:28,700 --> 00:21:34,190 And I chose the term co-option for this particular reason, to show that there are 174 00:21:34,190 --> 00:21:41,300 ways, there are always ways of connecting between the past and the present. 175 00:21:41,300 --> 00:21:48,920 Even, you know, even then there is, there is a revolutionary ideology on government in place. 176 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:55,760 Even if they try to cut this relationship with the past, they're unable to do that because they are constantly, themselves 177 00:21:55,760 --> 00:22:02,930 they are constantly going back to this path and try to have a selective approach to this past. 178 00:22:02,930 --> 00:22:14,660 And so, and also, you know, in, in terms of the episodic approach, as I mentioned in response to one of your questions, 179 00:22:14,660 --> 00:22:20,330 the fact that no matter what ideology these poets adhere to, 180 00:22:20,330 --> 00:22:28,850 they are always in conversation with other competing trends, including the leftist poetic jargon of the 1970s. 181 00:22:28,850 --> 00:22:33,210 I show this in details, in detail, details 182 00:22:33,210 --> 00:22:45,440 in one of the chapters of the book when I talk about how this mystique, poetic militant approach was co-opted, in fact. 183 00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:57,750 Partly by going back to the mystical tradition and mystical poetry and partly by going back to the guerrilla poetry of the Seventies. 184 00:22:57,750 --> 00:23:06,680 And, you know, by putting these two different jargons together, these poets came up with their own way out, you know, 185 00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:18,590 sort of sanctification of the war, making it a holy defense or the very notion of literary commitment Ta'ahhod-e Adabi, 186 00:23:18,590 --> 00:23:25,670 which was something that if you look at the works of the leftist secular poets of the pre-revolutionary period, 187 00:23:25,670 --> 00:23:32,960 you see that they are the pioneering voices, in fact, in formulating this concept. 188 00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:34,790 And then we have Mohammad Reza Hakimi, 189 00:23:34,790 --> 00:23:44,330 who comes a year before the revolution and also after the revolution with this book called Literature and Commitment in Islam. 190 00:23:44,330 --> 00:23:51,620 So suddenly everything is co-opted. And, you know, Islam is also itself co-opted and we have a new phenomenon. 191 00:23:51,620 --> 00:23:57,060 But this new phenomenon didn't come out of nowhere, you know, it had its roots in, its roots in the past. 192 00:23:57,060 --> 00:24:06,510 So I try to show these connections with the hope of not stopping by the Revolution or as a point of, 193 00:24:06,510 --> 00:24:13,400 as the only point of reference when you're talking about literature. Poetry has its own life. 194 00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:18,780 In fact, it was one of the reasons, I would say, one of the important reasons to trigger the Revolution itself. 195 00:24:18,780 --> 00:24:22,550 The poets contributed to that as well. Thank you. 196 00:24:22,550 --> 00:24:31,130 So early in the book, you set out to create an objective canon of revolutionary and post revolutionary poets, official poets. 197 00:24:31,130 --> 00:24:39,600 Can you tell us what objective criteria you used to make the selection the most important official poets of this period? 198 00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:45,620 Yes. I would say that was really the most challenging part of the book. To come up with, 199 00:24:45,620 --> 00:24:57,170 you know, a number of poets and then to say that these were the pioneering voices. For that, I have to go back to, I had to go back 200 00:24:57,170 --> 00:25:06,680 to what has been produced by the Islamic Republic itself and what has been said and argued. As well as, 201 00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:13,360 you know, the school textbooks and use my own lived experience in Iran, 202 00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:22,700 you know, the collective memory of many interviews that actually I had. Formal and informal conversations with the 203 00:25:22,700 --> 00:25:26,900 postrevolutionary generations. What did they remember? 204 00:25:26,900 --> 00:25:32,060 What was part of the collective memory? 205 00:25:32,060 --> 00:25:36,620 So all of this really brought me to those names in the first place. 206 00:25:36,620 --> 00:25:47,840 And I really used one word, if I want to say that really helped me to identify these poets was, the work of Mohammad Kazem Kazemi, 207 00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:49,510 who you know well, 208 00:25:49,510 --> 00:26:02,990 He is an Afghan immigrant poet in Iran, has become actually one of the most important voices of, you know, state sponsor narrative of literature. 209 00:26:02,990 --> 00:26:21,180 But at the same time, in fact, because I think his immigrant background helped him to be more objective about these poets rather than just 210 00:26:21,180 --> 00:26:27,510 promoting them or praising them just because the system wanted to hear these names. 211 00:26:27,510 --> 00:26:34,410 He has a very wonderful book called Dah shā'er-e enqelāb or Poets of the Revolution. 212 00:26:34,410 --> 00:26:42,820 I used that work. But, you know, that anthology in particular doesn't exactly go into depth. 213 00:26:42,820 --> 00:26:53,160 No ontology really tries to do that but really, that was an eye opener for me. In terms of the objective criteria, 214 00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:57,750 it was really important to me, the role these poets played. 215 00:26:57,750 --> 00:27:04,620 So I come up with two different generations: The generation that wrote before the Revolution 216 00:27:04,620 --> 00:27:09,830 and they were already part of the literary milieu before the Revolution happened. 217 00:27:09,830 --> 00:27:16,350 Poets such as Tahereh Saffarzadeh, Ali Mousavi-Garmaroudi, Ali Mo'allem, Hamid Sabzevari and so forth. 218 00:27:16,350 --> 00:27:22,830 And then the second generation whose poetic output and career really starts, by the Revolution 219 00:27:22,830 --> 00:27:33,150 and they become known as poets after the Revolution. And, you know, they went through different processes as poets. 220 00:27:33,150 --> 00:27:39,330 The way that Tahereh Saffarzadeh or Moussavi-Garmaroudi approached poetry 221 00:27:39,330 --> 00:27:45,450 or their relationships with the leftist poets were extremely intriguing to me. 222 00:27:45,450 --> 00:27:54,690 And then the way that they really shifted ideologically when the Revolution happened. 223 00:27:54,690 --> 00:28:00,410 And then they became, you know, they slowly became part of the official jargon. 224 00:28:00,410 --> 00:28:09,140 How did that take place and what was their role? They started taking up positions in the new government. 225 00:28:09,140 --> 00:28:19,920 Their very close ties and sometimes organising role in some of the most important institutional cultural institutions of the government, 226 00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,600 such as Howzeh-ye Honari you know, when were they meeting, 227 00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:35,660 and what was happening in those meetings. And then the way that their work was canonised in the school textbooks was also very important to me. 228 00:28:35,660 --> 00:28:43,800 For example, after the Revolution, one of the things that the government really tried to 229 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:52,840 emphasise at Qom was that, you know, Ahmad Shamlou is considered as one of the, if not the founder, the father of 230 00:28:52,840 --> 00:29:01,740 Blank Verse or She'r-e Sepid. After the revolution was one of the voices that was marginalised or censored. 231 00:29:01,740 --> 00:29:05,980 Although he never left Iran. But, you know, he really was pushed to the margins. 232 00:29:05,980 --> 00:29:17,100 And instead, Mousavi-Garmaroudi was introduced as the father of Blank Verse, She'r-e Sepid. 233 00:29:17,100 --> 00:29:20,700 You know, I had to understand how this, how this happened. 234 00:29:20,700 --> 00:29:26,790 And as much as you know, one agrees or disagrees with these kind of dichotomies, 235 00:29:26,790 --> 00:29:39,090 I think the fact that they took over the official platform was important and had to be understood and addressed. The way that their work was published. 236 00:29:39,090 --> 00:29:51,630 How did they published their work? Who published their work? And then also over time, what kind of relationship they had with the seat of power in particular. 237 00:29:51,630 --> 00:30:00,960 As you know, Khomenei has been, he's the current leader of the Islamic Republic, has been held, holding these annual poetry ceremonies. 238 00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:09,560 Many of these poets, in fact, became the poet laureates or malek-al-Shoʿarāʾ of these nights. 239 00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:18,120 Hamid Sabzevari up until his death, he was sitting with one chair distance from Khomenei all these years. 240 00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:21,630 He was one of the major poets who actually 241 00:30:21,630 --> 00:30:27,360 wrote many revolutionary songs that even the opposition today 242 00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:34,320 remember those songs and, you know, they sing them. So these were all very important and interesting to me 243 00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:38,170 and I wanted to, you know, make sense of them. 244 00:30:38,170 --> 00:30:42,660 And yes, these were the criteria that I used. 245 00:30:42,660 --> 00:30:53,340 So you alluded earlier in one of the responses to an earlier question, but also just now to your own personal experiences living in Iran, 246 00:30:53,340 --> 00:31:01,650 whether it was studying literature, moving to sociology and also reading from your mother's library and so on. 247 00:31:01,650 --> 00:31:11,040 But you yourself were also a practising poet who practised the craft under these same institutions and in these same conditions. 248 00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:17,220 So how did that influence your perspective in writing this book? 249 00:31:17,220 --> 00:31:23,600 Yes, I mean, the poetry circles in Mashhad definitely shaped me in many ways. 250 00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:35,800 And also school and my literature teacher in high school. For the first time, I found out 251 00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:38,660 when I was in the last year of high school, 252 00:31:38,660 --> 00:31:49,910 one day my teacher came to the class and after everyone left, she called me and she gave me a book that was wrapped in the newspaper. 253 00:31:49,910 --> 00:31:56,620 And, you know, I was struck by it and she said, read this and bring it back in the same shape newspaper. 254 00:31:56,620 --> 00:32:07,590 And it was my, I think it was my entry to this world of forbidden books or the books that were not supposed to be circulated in schools. 255 00:32:07,590 --> 00:32:22,100 And then, as I said, my, my mother's library had a really formative rule in understanding that some poets were more forbidden than others. 256 00:32:22,100 --> 00:32:29,470 And. And then, you know, when I started reading more seriously, more committedly, 257 00:32:29,470 --> 00:32:38,000 I got into literature and the history of poetry and tried to look at these patterns of continuity with the past, 258 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:45,800 one of the things that was, I think was very important to me was this relationship between the patronage and poets. 259 00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:47,930 You know, if you are into Persian poetry, 260 00:32:47,930 --> 00:32:57,150 it's impossible to not read and understand and acknowledge the importance of this relationship between the poet and the poet. 261 00:32:57,150 --> 00:33:05,540 And you have some of the most fascinating and wonderful Persian poems that came out as a result of this patronage, 262 00:33:05,540 --> 00:33:10,590 as, as an outcome of this relationship between the poets and the patronage. 263 00:33:10,590 --> 00:33:16,670 Well, then also, it was very interesting to me that these poets not always had the same fate. 264 00:33:16,670 --> 00:33:21,740 For example, you know, Masud Sa'd Salman is a good example 265 00:33:21,740 --> 00:33:32,530 I think, as a poet who was not lucky enough to be endorsed and supported by his patrons, not always, at least not. Naser Khosrow is another one. 266 00:33:32,530 --> 00:33:36,860 You know, we have stories, although not all of them are reliable. 267 00:33:36,860 --> 00:33:45,470 But the story of Ferdowsi and Shāhnāmeh how, you know it, you know, how Sultun Mahmoud decide to dismiss it. Whether or not it's a true story 268 00:33:45,470 --> 00:33:58,730 I think these are all important factors to kind of keep into account in terms of this precarious relationship between the poets and their patrons. 269 00:33:58,730 --> 00:34:04,340 And then I was always, you know, curious to see how this relationship changed over time. 270 00:34:04,340 --> 00:34:16,940 Of course, you know, we have the 1953 coup and, you know, the extensive detentions and imprisonment and persecution of intellectuals, poets included. 271 00:34:16,940 --> 00:34:20,940 So there was this break 272 00:34:20,940 --> 00:34:26,070 that happened after the constitutional revolution between the poets and the patrons. 273 00:34:26,070 --> 00:34:34,020 And then we have a sort of a return to a you know, to a form that we see in the pre-modern, 274 00:34:34,020 --> 00:34:40,920 that the government, the leaders, in fact, again, decide to endorse a certain group of poets. 275 00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:48,480 So I couldn't just help but seeing that pattern coming back in a different format. 276 00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:56,550 Now, many will argue that, you know, nothing aesthetically pleasing coming out of this relationship. 277 00:34:56,550 --> 00:35:03,600 That's something for critics to decide. You know, and evaluate that, 278 00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:12,210 why is this the case? I think one of the reasons for that is this sort of process of thought engineering, 279 00:35:12,210 --> 00:35:21,670 which is very similar to a language engineering, also, very similar to a Stalin era in fact. 280 00:35:21,670 --> 00:35:26,620 That said, I think being a poet really helped me, to sometimes 281 00:35:26,620 --> 00:35:32,640 go read these poetry beyond ideology, even when it was ideological. 282 00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:38,970 So, for example, in one of the chapters, I have two chapters in the book on the war. 283 00:35:38,970 --> 00:35:45,240 One of them is about the other face of war. 284 00:35:45,240 --> 00:35:52,290 It's called this in fact. I tried to show that some of these poets were still writing, you know, 285 00:35:52,290 --> 00:35:59,010 in service of ideology, but you see that sometimes they break away from the form, for example. 286 00:35:59,010 --> 00:36:10,050 And once this break happens, the content also shifts and you see a different kind of reality of war coming out of these poems. 287 00:36:10,050 --> 00:36:20,120 Now, being a poet, sometimes, you know, helped to understand this shift between the content and the form because it happens to my stuff all the time. 288 00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:29,430 So, you know, these poets, they're also just poets for the sake of poetry, not just poets for the sake of state. 289 00:36:29,430 --> 00:36:37,540 And you can see this in their poetic output if you look closely. 290 00:36:37,540 --> 00:36:50,560 And then also, like during the post war era, when Khomeini dies and then, you know, there is a shift in the ideology and the jargon, political jargon, 291 00:36:50,560 --> 00:37:02,140 you see that some of poets start writing completely differently and sometimes against the ideology that they held for more than a decade. 292 00:37:02,140 --> 00:37:16,080 A good example of this is Qaysar Aminpur, he was in fact awarded by the state as the poet of war, as the most important poet of war era. 293 00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:24,720 And then in the postrevolutionary period, he has two collections in which he, he writes in praise of peace. 294 00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:37,410 And in fact, criticises, in a way, himself as someone who promoted the sort of the ideology of war and violence during the war. 295 00:37:37,410 --> 00:37:46,140 One of my friends was also a journalist. I actually interviewed her during the period I was writing that, that chapter. 296 00:37:46,140 --> 00:37:49,950 And she told me that it was towards the end of Qaysar Aminpur's life. 297 00:37:49,950 --> 00:38:00,060 when he was interviewed. When she interviewed him. And she asked him about his poetry that he wrote during the war. 298 00:38:00,060 --> 00:38:04,290 And he completely paused and didn't want to answer the question. 299 00:38:04,290 --> 00:38:08,810 And he said, well, I also wrote poetry after the war 300 00:38:08,810 --> 00:38:14,440 and I would like you to also read those poems. Which, you know, I think is an interesting answer. 301 00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:20,970 And also, many of these poets, some of them showed up in poetry nights with Khominei. 302 00:38:20,970 --> 00:38:32,550 Some of them decided not to. And you also have some of these poets who leave the institution that themselves 303 00:38:32,550 --> 00:38:37,290 founded during the first decade of the Revolution. In the second decade 304 00:38:37,290 --> 00:38:45,610 there is a divide also. So I think being a poet really helped me to go beyond 305 00:38:45,610 --> 00:38:58,560 the ideological disagreements and divides and then also the way I came about work on this, that I decided to work on this topic 306 00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:09,630 in fact. The 2009 election turmoil played an extremely important role, not just in my personal life, but also in my professional life. 307 00:39:09,630 --> 00:39:11,220 It was really a turning point. 308 00:39:11,220 --> 00:39:22,870 I remember two months almost, I think, some two months after the elections when this started, the protests were still happening. 309 00:39:22,870 --> 00:39:27,680 You know, I was following Khominei's poetry nights for more than a decade. 310 00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:32,460 Quite, rather obsessively. It was interesting how poetry was staged 311 00:39:32,460 --> 00:39:36,600 in fact. Televised, live streamed. 312 00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:42,210 And then, you know, there was this huge outpouring of reports and books. 313 00:39:42,210 --> 00:39:53,100 Exactly in the form of the courtiers who were writing the events that was happening in the court in such vivid details. 314 00:39:53,100 --> 00:39:57,640 How many times he praised the poet. They were all footnoted in 315 00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,910 these books. So I was following those. 316 00:40:01,910 --> 00:40:08,630 And then when the election happened and the protests happened, he held, 317 00:40:08,630 --> 00:40:14,510 he didn't actually disrupt that event. The event took place. 318 00:40:14,510 --> 00:40:25,750 And the very fact that there was no disruption in the poetry reading in the middle of the most important uprising after the Revolution, 319 00:40:25,750 --> 00:40:32,610 when the streets were filled with the people and like everybody was, you know, 320 00:40:32,610 --> 00:40:44,700 protesting, we had this extremely calm and well-engineered and moderated poetry events in the TV as if nothing is going on. 321 00:40:44,700 --> 00:40:53,610 And these poets were reading poetry and the poetry was very poignantly related to what was happening in the streets. 322 00:40:53,610 --> 00:40:58,180 I end the book, with an ode, with a sort of 323 00:40:58,180 --> 00:41:02,630 qasideh. I start the book with a qasideh and I end the book with a 324 00:41:02,630 --> 00:41:13,570 qasideh to show how this most, this most ancient, oldest poetic form is still used in moments of 325 00:41:13,570 --> 00:41:21,380 crisis to bring poetic legitimacy 326 00:41:21,380 --> 00:41:32,090 at a time that the political legitimacy of the government is under scrutiny, questioned, alleged. 327 00:41:32,090 --> 00:41:36,960 And that was it and it is a wonderful poem by Amiri-Esfandaqeh. 328 00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:43,100 It's very interesting. It's written in the Khorasani style. 329 00:41:43,100 --> 00:41:56,050 And you see how over time then from Azarm's qasideh you know, you still have one individual for many in the centre of the poem. 330 00:41:56,050 --> 00:42:01,450 Very much in, in the style of the court poets. It moves 331 00:42:01,450 --> 00:42:09,060 and it shifts from Iran, you know, as a nation state. 332 00:42:09,060 --> 00:42:17,670 Now, Iran in the poem I show at the end, that in the poem, Iran and Khomenei are constantly fading into each other. 333 00:42:17,670 --> 00:42:21,900 Merging. And those 334 00:42:21,900 --> 00:42:35,270 were also very interesting elements for me as a poet to see how this poetic form is still very much capable and flexible and elastic 335 00:42:35,270 --> 00:42:44,990 after, you know, centuries. And very relevant, in fact, to today's, Iran's politics. 336 00:42:44,990 --> 00:42:49,880 Thank you. I wanted to ask you about female poets as well. 337 00:42:49,880 --> 00:43:00,470 So it's very striking that in your, in the, in the official canon and also in the canon that you construct yourself of the official poets, 338 00:43:00,470 --> 00:43:06,260 there's only one female poet, Tahereh Saffarzadeh, whom you mentioned earlier as well. 339 00:43:06,260 --> 00:43:15,290 And yet among the younger generations, in my experience of Iran, in the early 2000s at least, there were almost as many female poets as men, 340 00:43:15,290 --> 00:43:20,910 and in some circles there were more. So how might we understand this shift? 341 00:43:20,910 --> 00:43:29,460 Yes. First of all, I have to mention that this the cannon that I shape, for the sake of, you know, 342 00:43:29,460 --> 00:43:41,190 the space, I had to limit the work to the first two generations of this poetic cannon. 343 00:43:41,190 --> 00:43:51,060 The ones who are already established, the ones whose work already being circulated and in the textbooks, canonised in the 344 00:43:51,060 --> 00:43:58,700 textbooks and, you know, their name is already established as a poet in this official jargon. 345 00:43:58,700 --> 00:44:07,130 So. Now, in this circle that is, as you mention, and very, and very rightly so, 346 00:44:07,130 --> 00:44:11,820 is a very highly masculine cannon. 347 00:44:11,820 --> 00:44:23,040 Right. And there is only this one woman who stands out and really stands out, in her poetics especially. 348 00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:27,160 Is certainly Tahereh Saffarzadeh. Now, I mention in the book. 349 00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:33,840 And in fact, in the first chapter of the book that there were other poets, women poets at this period. 350 00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:39,810 Such as Sepideh Kashani, Fatimah Rake'i, for example, these are the poets who are writing. 351 00:44:39,810 --> 00:44:48,900 They're active at the time, but none of them made their way to, for example, school textbook. 352 00:44:48,900 --> 00:44:56,420 Their name was not as emphasised upon and highlighted as Tahereh Saffarzadeh. 353 00:44:56,420 --> 00:45:07,160 And I think the reason for that stemmed from the fact that it has to do with the Saffarzadeh's of the persona. 354 00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:13,310 Her history in the pre-revolutionary period. And also her poetics. 355 00:45:13,310 --> 00:45:21,980 You're absolutely right. There are in fact many women who do not belong to this particular circle. 356 00:45:21,980 --> 00:45:25,280 And they're pretty well read and widely known. 357 00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:34,520 And what, you know, the subject of this book was those poets whose work has been endured and cannonised by the government. 358 00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:40,880 That said, also, I have to add that, in the past few years especially, these poetry nights with Khomenei 359 00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:51,350 we see that there is an increasing number of women poets who are sitting in the back, you know, and reading about in praise of motherhood, 360 00:45:51,350 --> 00:46:03,220 in praise of like, pure love, that, you know, is also very much connected to this idea of being a devout woman. 361 00:46:03,220 --> 00:46:12,680 And I think their presence - and some of them are wonderful poets - feel not as canonised and important as Tahereh Saffarzadeh of course, 362 00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:19,160 but I think we might have in the future some of these female poets standing out, 363 00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:26,590 depending on whether or not this invented tradition of poetry nights continue. 364 00:46:26,590 --> 00:46:31,180 And I think that's very much bound to the life of the Islamic Republic itself. 365 00:46:31,180 --> 00:46:35,660 You know, whether or not it lasts in power. 366 00:46:35,660 --> 00:46:43,280 I think one reason that Tahereh Saffarzadeh became so important after the Revolution was the fact that the system 367 00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:54,200 was trying to, desperately so, trying to find an exemplary replacement for influential women poets such as Forugh Farrokhzad, 368 00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:57,170 whose work then was censored and banned after the Revolution. 369 00:46:57,170 --> 00:47:03,290 Although her work is circulated, but some of her poems, especially during the first decade after the Revolution 370 00:47:03,290 --> 00:47:08,850 I think, was an important period for the purge and the censorship. 371 00:47:08,850 --> 00:47:12,800 And Forugh Farrokhzad's poetry was one of them. 372 00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:22,220 I think she was a perfect replacement for Forugh Farrokhzad because she wrote in modern forms, her poetics was interesting and avant garde. 373 00:47:22,220 --> 00:47:25,910 In fact, in the book, I argue that she's the most avant garde, pull it off. 374 00:47:25,910 --> 00:47:30,890 She might be only one woman, but her voice really stands out. 375 00:47:30,890 --> 00:47:38,570 And, you know, she has really interesting poetic phrases, and, that evolves over time. 376 00:47:38,570 --> 00:47:41,990 So, and her very close relationship with Quran. 377 00:47:41,990 --> 00:47:51,410 You know, she was the translator of Quran. And I think that was extremely important in shaping her persona, not only as a woman poet, 378 00:47:51,410 --> 00:48:00,190 but as someone who is extremely well read and deeply engaged with the Islamic tradition. 379 00:48:00,190 --> 00:48:08,420 What is very interesting to me, she doesn't write in rhyming, you know, doesn't practise classical forms, 380 00:48:08,420 --> 00:48:12,520 which is something that is also very unique about her promotion. 381 00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:18,950 And, you know, other poets such as Rake'i and Kashani did. 382 00:48:18,950 --> 00:48:27,080 And if you want to think about the aesthetics of poetry, according to the current leader of the Islamic Republic, 383 00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:41,540 he actually very openly always mentions this, that his preference is, you know, he, he likes classical poetry more than modern poems. 384 00:48:41,540 --> 00:48:44,990 He said it very clearly. Yes. 385 00:48:44,990 --> 00:48:59,810 So I think that desperate need to replace Forugh Farrokhzad's influential sort of popular poetry pushed the system to you to choose, to pick, 386 00:48:59,810 --> 00:49:07,820 a woman who could speak to that, that sort of, you know, 387 00:49:07,820 --> 00:49:14,270 that poetic persona that Forugh Farrokhazad had. Yes. 388 00:49:14,270 --> 00:49:22,550 Thank you. So, I mean, for me, your book is full of insights that I think tell us things about the Iranian revolution 389 00:49:22,550 --> 00:49:27,830 and the postrevolutionary state and society that other historians have missed until now. 390 00:49:27,830 --> 00:49:36,190 But for you, which, which do you think is the most important? Which are you most proud of making a contribution with? 391 00:49:36,190 --> 00:49:51,130 Thank you for saying that. I think the most important thing for me was to, to show how poetic legitimacy and political legitimacy go hand in hand. 392 00:49:51,130 --> 00:50:06,380 And I think that's really something unique about Iran. And, and also to show how poetry is still very much relevant to the society and to the power. 393 00:50:06,380 --> 00:50:11,150 And I really wanted, you know, this is in a way a foundational book in the sense that, 394 00:50:11,150 --> 00:50:17,750 as you mentioned, because of that much gap that existed in the field, 395 00:50:17,750 --> 00:50:27,950 I really was challenged by how to write this one book that doesn't, is not going to answer all questions and 396 00:50:27,950 --> 00:50:39,620 probably creates more questions. How to write a book that opens up the field to further enquiry and research. 397 00:50:39,620 --> 00:50:45,850 One thing that, for example, I'm, I hope that I have shown in the book, 398 00:50:45,850 --> 00:50:49,360 is that, there are, we are, 399 00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:56,670 we are, we are dealing with a romantic form, of romantic political thought in Iran, 400 00:50:56,670 --> 00:51:09,640 in which poetry is so deeply embedded in the political jargon, that is almost impossible to separate it from it. 401 00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:16,010 And this is something that, you know, we have to address. We have to think about that. 402 00:51:16,010 --> 00:51:25,020 How this poetry and why this poetry is so embedded in this ideology. 403 00:51:25,020 --> 00:51:33,060 Another thing that I hope I have done in the book, that sort of would be useful to the readers 404 00:51:33,060 --> 00:51:35,400 is that interdisciplinary approach. 405 00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:44,430 This is a work that is not just literary criticism, is not just sociology of literature or social history of literature. 406 00:51:44,430 --> 00:51:51,500 I really try to use different theories from different backgrounds, political science, for example, 407 00:51:51,500 --> 00:51:58,560 to show that, you know, poetry, to think about poetry, we can thinking in between different disciplines. 408 00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:06,450 We don't have to just constantly go for a type of high literature and just stick to that. 409 00:52:06,450 --> 00:52:12,810 There are also other ways of looking at the Revolution and the Iranian society 410 00:52:12,810 --> 00:52:20,410 than just, as much as I love the high literature myself. 411 00:52:20,410 --> 00:52:30,900 Yes, I hope that the book offers that sort of sociological insight into understanding the role of poetry in this society. 412 00:52:30,900 --> 00:52:34,400 And in shaping the Revolution also. Absolutely, 413 00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:38,300 that was one of the main takeaways for me and one of the things I appreciated 414 00:52:38,300 --> 00:52:42,890 most about it was this showing how poetry is so pervasive in the society, 415 00:52:42,890 --> 00:52:53,150 but also how this really rich millennium-long heritage of Persian poetry can be reinvented almost completely and yet remain so 416 00:52:53,150 --> 00:53:02,870 much the same in so many ways to reflect a completely new political reality and help birth it in a way, to help bring it about, 417 00:53:02,870 --> 00:53:07,500 bring it into being. So it's absolutely fascinating. It's a wonderful book. 418 00:53:07,500 --> 00:53:16,640 I did want to ask you, out of very briefly, out of this official canon, which of these poets is your favourite personally? 419 00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:18,830 And. Well, that's one question. 420 00:53:18,830 --> 00:53:27,030 Maybe a slightly separate question is which one do you think will stand the test of time and remain in the Persian poet canon? 421 00:53:27,030 --> 00:53:33,880 You know, one hundred years from today. Perhaps, those, the two names will be different, but perhaps they'll be the same. 422 00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:44,780 Yes. I think if I want to choose one poet, that would be that would be Tahereh Saffarzadeh. 423 00:53:44,780 --> 00:53:56,970 Not just because she's the only woman poet, but because I think her poetics is extremely fascinating and interesting and unique in many ways. 424 00:53:56,970 --> 00:54:07,200 Between, you know, compared to other poets of this tradition. She has a very interesting life and very interesting background. 425 00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:15,330 And, you know, her shift towards the Islamic revolutionary ideology is a mystery to many of her close friends. 426 00:54:15,330 --> 00:54:25,560 She did an MFA in literature at the University of Iowa, travelled outside Iran, read literature, war literature pretty widely. 427 00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:30,390 She was a bilingual poet. She published in both Persian and English. 428 00:54:30,390 --> 00:54:35,490 She, in fact, has a collection which I briefly address in the book, 429 00:54:35,490 --> 00:54:42,440 introduced in the first chapter of the book called Red Umbrella, which is really my, 430 00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:51,870 you know, I have a couple of favourites, but I would say this is my most favourite collection of hers, 13 poems only. 431 00:54:51,870 --> 00:54:58,980 And they're published in English by University of Iowa in 1969. Extremely fascinating poetry. 432 00:54:58,980 --> 00:55:09,700 And you know, her relationship with the Quran, I have to say, is also, you know, as a scholar who 433 00:55:09,700 --> 00:55:18,440 closely read and engaged with the text, of the text as a form of poetry. Her relationship with the text, 434 00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:22,940 with the Quranic text is also very interesting to me. She also taught in universities. 435 00:55:22,940 --> 00:55:29,830 So she was a poet scholar. Very early on after the Revolution. 436 00:55:29,830 --> 00:55:38,410 In fact, her promotion to become a professor at the university during those extensive purges itself is an interesting dichotomy 437 00:55:38,410 --> 00:55:44,450 I think. So, yeah, for those reasons, and for the sake of her poetry. 438 00:55:44,450 --> 00:55:55,160 I think her poetry is very interesting in terms of the avant garde poetics and language and imagery that she uses. 439 00:55:55,160 --> 00:56:06,890 She doesn't exactly fit this category, often, as much as I really dislike this word Islamist, a female poet, she doesn't really fit that category, 440 00:56:06,890 --> 00:56:12,450 if you read the variety of her works before and after the Revolution. 441 00:56:12,450 --> 00:56:18,980 So I think, yeah, and I think she would be the one who would definitely remain, 442 00:56:18,980 --> 00:56:24,390 her name. Farzaneh Milani has written about her, in fact, very beautifully. 443 00:56:24,390 --> 00:56:37,980 And another poet, Qaysar Aminpur, which I don't think would last as much as Tahereh Saffarzadeh but be really popular among the mass, 444 00:56:37,980 --> 00:56:45,880 you know, you see him being quoted quite often on Twitter on different occasions. 445 00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:51,520 Some people don't even know whose poetry is this. But people write 446 00:56:51,520 --> 00:57:01,000 you know, as wrong name on the signature, like poem for example belongs to such and such. 447 00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:09,070 But it doesn't. But it shows that, you know, the poem has has its own journey after the poet writes it, 448 00:57:09,070 --> 00:57:18,590 no matter who wrote it, if it speaks to people, it travels. Is Qaysar Aminpur. 449 00:57:18,590 --> 00:57:25,920 He's interesting in the sense that he really was one of the, 450 00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:33,260 really, maybe the only poet of this cannon that managed to 451 00:57:33,260 --> 00:57:39,780 write fresh and contemporary in a true sense as Ghazals 452 00:57:39,780 --> 00:57:45,590 He really revived that tradition after the revolution. 453 00:57:45,590 --> 00:57:51,800 And I'm you know, he's he's shift on his disillusionment. I think he's very make him a very interesting case. 454 00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:57,110 Although he never really gave up on his ideology altogether. 455 00:57:57,110 --> 00:58:02,630 He always remained loyal to his, you know, his beliefs. 456 00:58:02,630 --> 00:58:07,030 But I think the fact that he experienced the different. 457 00:58:07,030 --> 00:58:19,870 All forms, including Ghazal makes him an interesting poet and, you know, poets such as Simin Behbahani, also praised his poetry. 458 00:58:19,870 --> 00:58:28,440 But if I want to choose one between the two, then definitely it will be Tahereh Saffarzadeh. 459 00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:31,010 Well Fatemeh, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. 460 00:58:31,010 --> 00:58:38,900 I've been speaking with author Fatemeh Shams about her book, A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option Under the Islamic Republic. 461 00:58:38,900 --> 00:58:52,408 And this has been Middle East Centre Booktalk. Thank you for listening and goodbye from Oxford.