Ahmad Shamlou

Ahmad Shamlou was born in Tehran and was mentored by Nima Yooshij before pioneering a radical evolution in modern Persian poetry: She'r-e Sepid (White/Blank Verse), which completely discarded metrical rhyme while maintaining a majestic, biblical cadence inspired by the 10th-century Persian translations of the Quran and history.

Shamlou was a towering intellectual who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He translated Lorca, Neruda, and Éluard into Persian, produced definitive critical editions of Hafez, and dedicated three decades to compiling Ketab-e Kucheh (The Book of the Alley), a monumental multi-volume encyclopedia of Iranian folklore, slang, and proverbs.