News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

The future of Afghanistan is incredibly dark, and decisions are happening incredibly quickly.

I think most good poetry is about suffering; I think that's what underlies the love in these landays pieces - suffering and longing.

The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice. Landays, they're about love and pleasure and oppression and levels of oppression within a family. And because of that, I think rap music is probably closely related.

Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

If we were to see Western landay poems, we'd see them out of disenfranchised populations, maybe out of the legacy of slavery. Spirituals, rap music - that would be the space we'd find American landays in.

If we think about folk forms, they belong to disenfranchised people, people who have not been allowed access to the poetry of literature or the leisure time that comes with the pursuit of poetry. Instead, this is ceremony. This is a highly charged way to create a sacred space that isn't necessarily about God, but is about human experience at its most profound levels - whether that's love or grief, separation, or homeland. All are altered states.