Armen Davoudian is an Iranian-born poet who grew up in Isfahan and currently resides in California. He is the translator of Hopscotch by Fatemeh Shams, a collection of poems by the contemporary Persian dissident poet, published in English and German. Davoudian holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University, where his research focuses on metanoia in Renaissance poetry. His poems and translations appear in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Hopkins Review, and other literary journals. His chapbook, Swan Song, won the Frost Place Competition.

This week we discuss the debut of his newest poetry collection, The Palace of Forty Pillars, that was long-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award and named a “Best Book of Spring” by the San Francisco Chronicle. Davoudian reads and reflects on several of his poems, including “27 Marjan Street,” “Travel Ban,” and the first sonnet from the book’s titular sequence. The conversation also explores how personal and cultural distances can enrich poetic insight, how form can be both a constraint and a generative force, and what Davoudian is currently working on.

Join us as we have a heartfelt conversation that revolves around his collection of poetry and explore how his experiences of migration, queerness, and cultural duality shape and deepen his creative work.

This is Armen Davoudian Unbound.

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