Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Persian Poetics, Growing Up in Detroit and Discovering the Love of Persian Poetry

My name is Leyla Shams, host of the Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation podcast. Today’s interview is with Mohammad Ali, better known as Persian poetics on both Instagram and twitter. He went viral just a few months ago on a twitter thread where he talked about the bestselling poetry book in the English language, a translation of Rumi’s poems by Coleman Barks. In the thread, he went through a details look at Coleman Bark’s translations, and revealed that Barks doesn’t even know the Persian language- so how is he translating Rumi? Since the thread went viral, Mohammad Ali has picked up the pace of his own more accurate translations of Rumi and other Persian poetry. He has a lot of other wonderful poetry content that we’ll talk about in this interview. His own personal story is very interesting too, of how he was born in Detroit and grew up there as well, but became enamored by Iranian culture and eventually the language and of course, the poetry.  Find Persian Poetics on Instagram and on Twitter.