CreativeMornings/London LATES - The Poetry of Rumi with Haleh Liza Gafori

HALEH LIZA GAFORI is a performance artist, translator, vocalist, poet, and musician born in NYC of Persian descent. Her acclaimed books of translations of poetry by Rumi, the 13th century mystic and sage, Water (2025) and Gold (2022) were both published by New York Review Books Classics. A bicultural woman with ears tuned to the music of American free verse as well as to the subtleties of the Persian text, Gafori aims to transmit the whirling movement and leaping progression of thought and imagery in Rumi’s poems into contemporary American poetry.
Gafori is a 2024 MacDowell fellow, and the recipient of a 2023 New York State Council on the Arts grant supporting the development of her cross-media performance piece based on GOLD. Weaving translations, original text, and musical compositions sung in Persian and English, she offers audiences glimpses of the astonishing rhythm and wordplay of Rumi’s original text, while uncovering how deeply and urgently the poetry dialogues with our times.

Gafori’s translations and her original writings have been published by Harvard Review, Paris Review, Columbia University Press, the Brooklyn Rail, Literary Hub, and elsewhere.

Sharing her passion for Rumi’s poetry and the liberating messages that pulse through them, Gafori has presented her musical cross-media piece, lectures, readings, and craft workshops at at institutions such as Stanford University, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Academy of American Poets, Sarah Lawrence College, and Lincoln Center.