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In this episode, Belle interviews Niloofar Haeri, Anthropology Professor at Johns Hopkins University, about her recent book, Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2021).
In Say What Your Longing Heart Desires (and in our podcast episode), Haeri illustrates how poetry shaped and transformed the religious lives and practices of a group of women in contemporary Iran. The ethnography traces how the historic and culturally-ingrained practice of poetry reading and recitation of mystic poetry in particular, intertwined with prayer, helped these women situate their relationship to the divine.
We begin by discussing the lives of the women Haeri did fieldwork with. They met regularly to read poetry together, and discuss the enduring relevance of Iran’s many historic poets, such as Hafez. Haeri discusses the women’s childhoods, when poetry recitation shaped their relationship to religion and led them to question what they viewed as hypocrisies of religious practices. She elaborates on the different meanings that poetry can take on, particularly understandings that are embodied and not necessarily linguistically expressed.
Haeri notes that technology was key in making poetry more accessible to the masses in Iran over the last several decades. With the advent of radio, people could hear poems sung; television shows broadcast poetry reading competitions; and today poems are shared across social media. Yet, even amidst these technological infrastructures spreading the importance of poetry, Haeri emphasizes the significance of getting together in person for the women she interviewed.
We also discuss the linguistic tensions between reciting poetry and prayer in Persian versus in Arabic, and some of the more humorous situations misunderstandings can result in, such as an Iranian man mistakenly reciting an Arabic poem filled with curses at a funeral, as he did not understand the words.
We end with a discussion of generational shifts, and how the fieldwork Haeri conducted has contextualized her understanding of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
Guest
Niloofar Haeri
Niloofar Haeri is an Anthropology Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She was a Guggenheim Fellow, and the author of Sacred Language, Ordinary People (2003), among other works. Her most recent book, Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran, was published by Stanford University Press in 2021.
Host
Belle Cheves
Belle Cheves is a senior editor at Ajam Media Collective and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bard College. Her research focuses on the history of family in Qajar Iran, specifically on how transformations of marital practices and affective perceptions of gender, race, and ethnicity shifted understandings of kinship, enslavement, and domestic service over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Credits
Episode No. 44
Release Date: 7 October 2024
Recording Location: Baltimore, MD
Recording Date: 2 May 2024
Produced by Belle Cheves
Audio Editing: Belle Cheves and Nicholas Gunty
Music: Yavaran (Intro: “404 day in heaven;” Outro: “Har Chi”)
Cover Image: Sonnet III by Jason Noushin, used as the book’s cover image.
