Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,10 Mar 2026,28 mins

Landays: Poems of Afghan Rebellion

Artworks

Available for over a year

Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and regular visitor to Afghanistan, talks to female Afghan poets about the landay: a 22 syllable Pashtun verse form they create, perform and share to speak of love, sex, war and hardship. Translator and editor Eliza Griswold describes her discovery of this oral tradition, which led to a project to collect and publish some of these anonymous poems. Landays read by Shala Nyx Translated interview voiced by Yasmin Mwanza Landays translated by Eliza Griswold and published in I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux) Made with the assistance of journalist and translator Zarghuna Kargar Produced by Emma Harding, BBC Audio Wales

Programme Website
More episodes