A constant feature of the literary history of Iran has been the enduring relationship between poetry and political power, something that has manifested itself across different historical epochs. The continuing political influence of poets throughout recorded history is what makes Iran a unique case study in the study of the social history of Middle Eastern literatures. During the medieval era, court poets often appeared as the close companions of the king, trading patronage for cultural legitimization insofar as their elegies and prosodies formed a source of counsel and moral guidance to the king. In the course of Constitutional Revolution, however, the role of poet dramatically changed from the companion of the king to his critical opponent. In contrast to the medieval period during which the poets were isolated from their social context and confined in the court, the literati of the late Qajar and the early constitutional period not only sought to re-connect with broader Iranian society, but also were the first generation to take on more cosmopolitan influences by travelling widely throughout Europe and the greater middle east. The trend of poet as critic continued up to the rise of the Islamic revolution. In the post-revolutionary period, the relationship between poetry and politics changed again due to the emergence of a new revolutionary poetic trend on one side and the poetic interests and background of the two main revolutionary leaders on the other. In contrast to the Pahlavi era -when the Shah had shown no interest in the possibilities of poetry- the revolutionary leaders redefined literary commitment towards their own ideological interests through the founding of a state-run literary institution to promote ‘revolutionary literature’. The present paper attempts to offer an ethnographical study of the newly-emerged literary phenomenon in the post-revolutionary Iran, called ‘Annual Poetry Nights with the Supreme Leader’. After a brief introduction on the emergence of this annual literary feast and based on the interviews with organizers and attendants of these sessions, it will be argued that the institutionalization of poetry in post-revolutionary Iran, has given birth to a semi-court poetic trend both in terms of content and form. It will be further argued that the constant affinity displayed by leaders of the revolutionary state towards poetry, has made poetry a powerful tool both of resistance against and propagation of the current regime.