Roger Sedarat
Klapper 704, 718-997-4713
sedarat@yahoo.com
Roger Sedarat is a poet and translator. He is the author of two poetry collections, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, which won Ohio UP's 2007 Hollis Summers' Prize, and Ghazal Games (Ohio UP, 2011), as well as an academic study, New England Landscape in American Poetry: A Lacanian View (Cambria, 2011).
In addition to publishing articles on American poetry, Middle Eastern-American literature, and translation in theory and praxis, he has placed recent poems and translations in Green Mountains Review, Zoland Poetry, and World Literature Today. A recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a St. Botolph Society Grant, he is Associate Professor in the MFA program and Associate Chair of the English Department.
After receiving his BA at the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in English/Creative Writing at Queens College, he completed a PhD in English at Tufts University. His doctoral dissertation examines the figuration of New England history in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell. Much of his creative writing as an Iranian-American poet involves the connection of his Middle-Eastern background to the American literary tradition, adapting Persian themes and forms into English. His creative interests include using humor, post-modern performance, politics, and popular culture to transgress social norms and violate aesthetic expectations. He is currently working on a full-length book of translations of verse by the 14th century Persian Sufi poet, Hafez.
