Please register for this unique event: https://bit.ly/45Rb0s9

You are warmly invited to our next event . We are delighted to be collaborating with one of the foremost experts on Persian poetry and literature, Professor Zahra Taheri. She is also a published poet herself, and will be adding her own superb contemporary poetry as well as some of the greatest works of literature in the Persian language, by Hafez, Maulana Rumi, Khayam and “Attar.

This program is the first event of our new Ensemble-in-Residency at the ANU School of Music, and highlights our collaboration with the ANU’s Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies (CAIS), where Professor Taheri has been leading its Persian Studies for many years.

To understand Persian classical music, you must hear its poetry…the ancient rhythms, intoxicating themes and sheer beauty of the language speak of a culture, developed over millennia, which contemplates the nature of love. Poetry and music have always developed as two sides of the one art form in Iran. Mary Boyce tells us that there was in fact only one word for music and poetry, in Aechemenid times. Through conquests such as that of Alexander of Greece, Persia’s ancient culture was transmitted over generations by travelling gusan (minstrels) who recited the wisdom of their cultural heritage to music. Later, these musical poets became known as mehreban (carriers of kindness). The poets of the 12th and 13th centuries chosen for this evening incorporated this heritage into their Islamic culture, preserving a mysticism unique to Persia and a rich trove of wisdom, stories and symbolism which is alive today for its people. .

After our poetry and music, we will be pleased to meet you over light drinks and refreshments at the Wig & Pen at approximately 7:20pm.

Please register at the Eventbrite booking page: https://bit.ly/45Rb0s9

Dr Zahra Taheri

Dr. Zahra Taheri is the honorary Associate Professor of Persian Studies Program at The Australian National University, and the Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK). The area of her research is Persian Literature and Language, Gender Studies, Women in Persian mystical and Ethical Texts. 

Dr. Taheri received her BA in Persian Language and Literature form Pahlavi University/Shiraz, her MA from Tehran University, and her Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been teaching Persian language and Iranian Studies courses in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley (USA), the Department of Persian Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan), and Australasian National University (Australia). Her first book The Presence and Absence of Women in Persian Sufi Texts was published by the Institute of Asian and African Studies in Tokyo and Iran (2007. 2012); and her second book The Silence of Old Mirrors: The Lost Voice of a Muslim Woman in the Constitutional Revolution Era was published in Japanese (Tokyo, 2012) and in Persian (Tehran 2016). She has published more than thirty-seven scholarly articles on Persian literature and women in different areas of Sufism and ethics in academic journals around the world. She is also a published poet. The third and fourth collections of her poetry, Daaman be khaak mikeshad maah, and The Narratives of the Soul and the Image on the Wall have been published in 2022 and 2025 in Iran.