Leverhulme Lecture: From Kinetic Poetics to Poetic Cinema: Abbas Kiarstami and the modernist tradition in Persian Poetry

Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (University of Maryland)

Professor Ahmed Karimi-Hakak is currently a Visiting Professor at SOAS Near and Middle East Studies Department.

In this first Leverhulme Lecture, he will explore the moves in Persian poetry that lead from the modernist tradition to more recent works, many of which feature a manifestly greater sense of visuality, and to the poetry of Abbas Kiarostami, a complete newcomer to the art of Persian poetry.  The exploration will make visible a historical trend toward greater appeal of visual elements and a process of distancing from certain basic features of the classical practice, such as the concordances and contrasts that constitute the struts and beams of classical Persian verse.  The talk will conclude by speculating that perhaps this has been brought about in part as a result of the Persian culture’s gradual incorporation of the powers of cinema into its texture.