Iranists Leyla Lakhuti and Evgeniya Nikitenko will discuss the locus of poetry in the culture of Iran and read verses by the “poet of Iranian cinema” Abbas Kiarostami and other authors.
Like many Iranian intellectuals, Abbas Kiarostami was a poet. This is hardly surprising: Iran has always been known as the land of poets: its rulers, mathematicians, mystics, and historians all wrote poetry. The history of Persian classical poetry dates back over a thousand years. A century ago, Iranian proponents of westernization launched a poetic reform and abandoned the old tradition. New Poetry was created with its new styles and themes. Kiarostami was a poet of this new movement.
The audience will discover the differences between the classical and the new Persian poetry traditions and the connections between them, and hear some poems by Abbas Kiarostami and other poets in the original language as well as in translation.
