Fatemeh Shams & Dick Davis discuss her Persian poems & his translations of them

On March 2, at the Kelly Writers House, Fatemeh Shams, a poet who writes in Persian, and Dick Davis, an eminent translator from Persian to English, discussed her poems and his translations—and the art of translation generally. We are now making available both audio and video recordings of this event: LINK TO VIDEO & LINK TO AUDIO.

DICK DAVIS is a British poet, and translator. He is professor emeritus of Persian at Ohio State University. He has written scholarly works on both English and Persian literature, as well as eight volumes of his own poetry, and been the recipient of numerous academic and literary awards, including both the Ingram Merrill and Heinemann awards for poetry. His publications include volumes of poetry and verse translation chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK) in 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK) in 1989; The Economist (UK) in 2002; The Washington Post in 2010, and The Times Literary Supplement (UK) in 2013. He has published numerous book-length verse translations from medieval Persian, most recently, Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz(2012). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been called, by The Times Literary Supplement, “our finest translator from Persian”.

FATEMEH SHAMS is an Iranian poet, translator and professor of Modern Persian literature who is currently based at the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at University of Pennsylvania. Her three poetry collections in Persian and English have received recognition and prestigious literary awards in the past ten years. Her most recent collection “When They Broke Down the Door”, translated by tDick Davis, received the 2016 annual book prize by the Persian Heritage Foundation. She was recognized as one of the leading voices of exile and diaspora literature when she won the Jaleh Esfahani poetry prize for the best young Iranian poet in 2012. She holds a doctorate in the field of Oriental Studies from University of Oxford, United Kingdom and currently teaches courses in the field of Persian literature at UPenn.