Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Intro

In this introductory lesson to Simin Behbahani's beautiful, important, and timely poem, dobāré meesāzamet vatan, we're joined by Dr. Sahba Shayani to talk about the general theme and meaning behind this poem. 

In this episode, Leyla sits down with Hamid Rahmanian — the Iranian-American artist, filmmaker, and visionary behind some of the most ambitious Shahnameh projects of our time, including the illustrated Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, the touring live productions Feather ...  Show more

What can a poem do in the face of calamity? This was an extraordinary conversation. Huda Fakhreddine joins the podcast to discuss "Pull Yourself Together," a poem that Huda has translated into English and that was written by the Palestinian poet, novelist, and educator Hiba Abu N ...  Show more

In Mosab Abu Toha’s “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is al ...  Show more

Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, dis ...  Show more

This classical Arabic poem isn't just eloquent — it's dangerous. Laamiyah al-Arab is the voice of Shanfara, a man betrayed by blood, raised by the one who killed his father, and driven to the wild. He swore vengeance. He lived with wolves. He wrote verses that shook Arabic lit ...