• Poets and writers in Konya for The Same Gate
    Cappadocia landscape
    The author at the tomb of Yunus Emre
    Sema ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes
    Entering Rumi's tomb
    A guest post by Bina Shah.[iae|313|r]Come, come, whoever you are.Worshipper, wanderer, lover of leaving, it doesn't matter.Ours is not a caravan of despairCome, even if you have broken your vows a thousand timesCome, yet again, come, come.- RumiOne...
  • Celebrating the Water Festival in Yangon, Myanmar
    On Going Home is the name we've given to a short series of essays by our fall residents. We commissioned the pieces because we wanted to keep in touch and were curious about what the process of returning home was like for authors who'd spent...
  • US-based Iranian poet and translator Sholeh Wolpe takes pictures outside of Rumi Shrine and Museum complex in Konya
    Turkish writer Emre Erdem, Nigol Bezjian, Esin Celebi Bayru (Rumi's granddaughter 21 generations removed), Chris Merrill
    Poet Somaia Rumish of Afghanistan reading Rumi inside the Armenian church in Karaman
    Filmaker Nigol Bezjian gets footage of Iranian-born, Sweden-based writer Jila Estakhri
    “Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don’t really own anything.What is this competition we feel then,before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?”─Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi Last Friday, 17 poets and writers from the U.S., Syria,...
  • WhitmanWeb: A Multimedia Gallery: http://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/
    This week, the International Writing Program (IWP) adds Arabic, Polish, and the first-ever Malay translation of Walt Whitman’s famous poem “Song of Myself” to the 9-language WhitmanWeb multimedia gallery. The gallery, which presents one section of...
  • Poet and filmmaker Nick Twemlow will teach this summer's Poetry Masterclass
    Once you’ve written the first draft of a poem, what happens next? Find out by applying for the International Writing Program (IWP)’s upcoming Poetry Masterclass, one of two free 7-week virtual poetry seminars to be taught online through IWP Distance...
  • “Writers in Burma have to find a way to penetrate censorship; we have to be more innovative in terms of techniques, style, technology…more creative” –Pandora (Burma/Myanmar)This month, the International Writing Program (IWP) released the 2012...

Sampsonia Way

National Poetry Month Celebrated at Sampsonia Way

The 2012 National Poetry Month Poster from the Academy of American Poets

Our friends at Sampsonia Way recently published this wonderful interactive feature on their blog in celebration of National Poetry Month.

Included are recordings of some of our alumni and friends: Khet Mar (IWP '07), Meena Kandasamy (IWP '09), Soheil Najm (IWP '09), Hind Shoufani (IWP '11), Terrance Hayes (one of four poets commissioned for the IWP's Book Wings performance), and Cornelius Eady, who will be travelling with the IWP to Brazil next month.