Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Haleh Liza Gafori

Poet, translator, and musician Haleh Liza Gafori describes the revered 13th-century Persian poet Rumi as “a good pal to humanity”. As she puts it, “He's rooting for our liberation.” In this exuberant conversation recorded for the 2025 Greenbelt Festival, she reads some of her translations, and she and Pádraig Ó Tuama illuminate the life of the man known as Rumi — his intense love of all things earthly and divine, the Islamic faith and universalist vision that flow through his work, and his life-changing connection with Shams, a Sufi mystic who catalyzed Rumi’s transformation from preacher to poet.

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Haleh Liza Ghafori is a New York City-born translator, poet, and musician of Iranian descent. Her most recent book of translations of poetry by the 13th-century mystic Rumi is entitled Waterand was released in April of 2025 by New York Review Books. Her first translation of Rumi was the acclaimed Gold, released in 2022, also by New York Review Books.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

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