Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) has been often celebrated as one of Iran’s greatest poets who inspired experimentalist modernist poets of his own generation. This talk introduces Sepehri’s modernist mission and rehabilitates the importance of his oeuvre by focusing on the between-ness and otherness that is central to his work. Through a close reading of Sepehri’s Eight Books (Hasht Ketāb), the speaker elaborates on ways in which Sepehri transcended the rigid boundaries of ideology and dialectical identity by inviting the reader into an imaginative space of esthetic, existential, epistemological fluidity, and freedom.Dr. Fatemeh Shams is a social literary historian, critic, and poet who currently serves as an Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She has extensively published on the relationship between literature, power, and political ideology. Her critical monograph, A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option Under the Islamic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2021) is the first comprehensive study of state-sponsored poetic production and institutionalization of literature after the 1979 Revolution. Shams is also an internationally acclaimed award-winning poet with three poetry collections. Her poems have been featured in the Poetry Magazine, World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, London Poetry Magazine, and two Penguin Anthologies, among others.