Sneak Peek: Marjan Kamali Podcast

Marjan Kamali: I grew up with poetry being part of our daily life and this is not uncommon for a lot of Iranians in Iran, certainly, and in the diaspora. So, you know, if I skinned my knee, if I spilled some orange juice, my dad would recite a verse from an ancient Persian poem. They were always at his fingertips, those verses. And I grew up hearing them, if not necessarily memorizing them myself. So, poetry was a huge part of my life. Poets are venerated in Iran and they're sort of the heroes of the culture. But I read a lot. It gave me the greatest pleasure. And I feel like the cake was baked back then, because I read so much as a child and it sort of gave me not just a desire to do what those authors did, but it almost, like, gave me access to all these different worlds and voices that stayed with me.