Learn Persian with Chai in Conversation Growing Up Iduni with Persian Poetics.

Hello, my name is Leila Shams, and I'm the host of the Learn Persian with Chying Conversation podcast.

Today's interview is with Mohamed 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 best-selling poetry book in the English language, a translation of Rumi's poems by Coleman Barks.

In the thread, he went through a detailed look at Coleman Barks' translations and revealed

that Barks doesn't even know the Persian language, so how is he translating Rumi?

Since the thread went viral, Mohamed Ali has picked up the pace of his own more accurate

translations of Rumi and other Persian poetry. He has a lot of other really wonderful

poetry content that we'll talk about in this interview. His own personal story is also very

interesting of how he was born in Detroit and grew up there as well,

but became enamored by the Iranian culture and eventually the language and, of course, the poetry.

So without further comment, here's my growing up Iranian interview with Mohamed Ali of Persian Poetics.

Mohamed Ali, hello, and thank you so much for talking with me today.

Of course. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so you have a very unique backstory.

You run Persian Poetics, which is devoted to translating correctly Rumi poems,

and you're on a mission to take down all those fake translations on there.

Right, right.

So I think a lot of people might have seen your viral post about Rumi and Coleman Barks,

which I reread today.

It was just so well put together.

You're too kind.

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