Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Haleh Liza Gafori

Poetry Unbound

In this episode of Poetry Unbound in Conversation, poet, translator, and musician Haleh Liza Gafori shares her deep connection to the 13th-century Persian

Key takeaways

• Rumi is portrayed not just as a poet but as a 'good pal to humanity,' deeply invested in human liberation from ego, dogma, and psychological constraints.
• Gafori emphasizes Rumi's ability to blend Islamic mysticism with broader spiritual traditions, including Persian folklore, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Main topics

• The life and spiritual journey of Rumi
• Translation as an act of love and embodiment

Notable quotes

"He's rooting for our liberation. He's rooting for us to untie the knots in our psyches or to break through the mind-forged manacles, the shackles."

Conclusion

Haleh Liza Gafori's passionate exploration of Rumi reveals poetry as a living, breathing

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Hi friends, Padraig O'Tooma here. Thanks very much for listening to Poetry Unbound. In between Poetry Unbound seasons, and we have season 11 that'll start later in 2026, we have a whole host of interviews that I've done with poets over the last two years. Poetry Unbound in conversation, we call them. I've loved the opportunity to talk to poets about their craft, how they see the world through the lens of poetry, and what this art form does for them. These... poetry unbound in conversation episodes deepened my curiosity about language and art. I trust they will for you too. Speaker 1 (0:40) For today's Poetry Unbound in Conversation, you'll be hearing from Hala Liza Ghaffouri, a translator, poet and musician, among many other things. She reads from her two volumes of translations of the 13th century mystic poet Rumi. They're titled Gold and Water, both published by New York Review Books. This conversation was part of the Greenbelt Festival, an annual festival for arts, activism and belief in England. Greenbelt has an online component too. For this conversation, Hala joined us from Vermont while I called in from New York City. A special thanks to Paul Northup, Jane Cookson, Joanna Booth, Stream7, Christian Aid and all the volunteers and staff and audience members at the Greenbelt Festival. Thanks too to Hala Liza Ghaffouri and her publishers, New York Review of Books. Welcome to Poetry Unbound in Conversation. My name is Paltryk O'Tooma, and here I am with Hale Liza Gafuri. Speaker 1 (1:47) friends. God, it's so nice to see you all. This is my 22nd Greenbelt, I think, or 23rd to be involved with. I'm very sad not to be there in person, but I'm very glad to be involved from afar. And I'm thrilled to be in conversation today with one of the foremost scholars and translators and reciters and embodyers of Rumi. Hala Liza Ghaffouri is a poet and she's a performer and she's a scholar and translator of Rumi, who was a 13th century Muslim mystic and poet. Hala is of Persian descent, born in New York City. That's where I am right now. And she has sung and translated the poetry of various Persian poets for well over a decade. She's the translator of water. I've got this here and gold. Speaker 1 (2:36) these New York Review of Books magnificent renditions of Rumi's poetry done by her. And she's taught classes at many universities. So, Halle, you are very, very welcome to Greenbelt. Thank you. Thank you so much, Padraig. I know you're up in, also in the States at the moment, in the country of Vermont, and you're going to be doing your recital later on tonight, also in a field. Yes, yes. Another green field in Vermont. Wow. I wonder if you'd be able to say a little bit about Rumi, just to give an introduction. My guess is that lots of people might know the name or heard a few quotes or heard somebody saying him or seen a quote from him put up somewhere in a retreat center. But I'd love it if you could just tell us a little bit about him. Sure, yeah. Well, as you said, he's a 13th century Persian poet. We call him Persian, a Persian poet, because... Speaker 1 (3:32) He was writing largely in Persian. At that time, there weren't really nation states. So he was born in present-day Afghanistan or present-day Tajikistan. There's a little bit of a disagreement about that. He traveled across Central Asia, landed in Turkey eventually, present-day Turkey eventually. So he was moving across this whole land, you know, and he was writing largely in Persian. I think about 98% of his writing is in Persian. So that's why we call him a Persian poet. And he was a mystic. He was a sage. He was an ecstatic lover. He was a confessional poet, too. He was speaking of his own struggles, of his own journey on this path of expanding into deeper and wider sensations of love. Speaker 1 (4:26) His practice of love, his practice of deep listening, his practice of whirling, all the whirling dance that the dervishes do, all of this comes into his poetry. He was the son of an Islamic theologian, so he was born into the tradition of even fasting. He was even fasting as a child. He was chanting the 99 names of God. And he was also absorbing. Persian folklore, probably some Hindu and Buddhist thought as well, because we see that in, for instance, in the Masnavi, there is a little bit of that. We won't talk about how most of the references are coming out of the Quran, but there's a lot of other stuff as well swirling around in his work. And I would say he's a good pal. A good pal of yours. That's lovely. Speaker 1 (5:23) And a good pal to humanity. I mean, he's rooting for us. He's rooting for our liberation. He's rooting for us to untie the knots in our psyches or to break through the mind-forged manacles, the shackles. He talks about these a lot, of our own conditioning, of dogma, of our own ego. I mean, he's rooting for us and our liberation. And so I really do feel he's a friend to humanity. In a while, I'm keen to hear how it is that you came across him. But I just want to check in about his name as well. So Rumi is, what does Rumi mean? Is that his full name? What is his full name? Or is he known by other things too? Yes, he is known by, I mean, across the Middle East, he's known as Molana or Mevlana, which is the same word essentially. Molana, the Persians, like my parents call him Molana. They don't call him Rumi. That means our sage. Speaker 1 (6:21) our master. And that's what he's known as. And in Turkey, they call him Mevlana, same meaning. His name was Jalaluddin Muhammad ibn Hussein Balkhi. So Balkhi means from Balkh. And Balkh is present-day Afghanistan. But then eventually he was called Rumi because he was living in Anatolia for much of his life from around the age of 20 until he died. He was living in present-day Turkey, which is... part of Anatolia, which is Rum. So of Rum, right? Which is considered Western in the realm of Central Asia, the realm of the Middle East, that's considered pretty West, right? So sometimes it's considered of Anatolia, of Rum, of the West, you know. But his actual last name was Balkhi. Okay. Speaker 1 (7:11) You mentioned that your parents also have a reverence for him. Tell us a little bit about how it is that you came to be in such kind of a deep relationship with Rumi, because it's a very interesting story. Yeah, well, you know, my father was the first person I ever heard recite Rumi. And he would, you know, he'd be walking around the house. Sometimes he'd be whistling Beethoven's, you know, Ninth Ode to Joy. He loved that. Sometimes he'd be reciting Rumi. Sometimes he'd be quoting Fitzgerald or even Flannery O'Connor. You know, he liked to recite from world literature. But Rumi was a central or Molana was a central figure in that in our house, you know, and I would hear him as a child. And I didn't really understand what he was reciting as a child. I could hear the rhythm and rhyme and. Speaker 1 (8:07) As I've said, you know, I felt like the poems kind of galloped through the living room because they have this very muscular, propulsive rhythm. And I would stand in the golden dust they left in their wake. And this was in New York City? Yeah. Well, no, actually, it was Fort Lee, New Jersey. So from an eighth floor balcony in Fort Lee, New Jersey, I'd look out at New York City at the West Side Highway and the Hudson River. And I would hear these lines. And yeah, I didn't understand them at the time. But I remembered that they were special and they had some kind of weight and room would change. And they were recited. And then later, I read translations. And then later, I started singing, you know, and I make this motion because it was like he was spiraling through my life, like a good dervish. And then I was singing in Persian. And then eventually in 2016, Speaker 1 (9:03) So nine years ago, I started translating. Both your parents came from Iran to the United States just shortly before you were born? Yes, they came before I was born. So I was born in New York City. They met in University of Tehran Medical School. They both graduated from there. And their intention was to come to America and continue their medical education. But then the Islamic Revolution happened and they didn't go back. So they stayed. I was born in New York City at the hospital that my mother was working at, at Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx. And as I've said, you know, in the intro to Water, they came to America with one suitcase of clothing and two suitcases of books. And one of those books was the Mass Nevi that my grandfather gave my mom. Speaker 1 (9:53) We're going to have lots of opportunities to hear you recite various things in response to different parts, but I'd be curious to hear from the first. Are there any parts that you can recite that are in the original that are untranslated so we can get a feel for the contours of the sound of Rumi as he wrote himself? Sure. Maybe I'll do an excerpt. I'll do one that I often do because the rhythm and rhyme is so tremendous. And then I'll do a little piece of another one. So I'm not always doing that one. Here's one. Speaker 1 (10:43) Rooz toey, rooze toey, hasele dar yooze toey, aab toey, kooze toey, aab dehim bar mara. In tan agar kam tanadi, rahe dilem kam zanadi, rah shodi ta nabodi, in hame goftar mara. So that's a piece of one. And there was a lot of, there's a lot of internal rhyme in that one, you know. And you hear maybe the Ghazal form where maro, maro, maro, maro, he kept ending. So here's another Ghazal. I'll just recite a bit of it. Speaker 1 (11:34) I can hear that. Yes. With the Ghazal, it's in couplets and the last word of every couplet is the same in a repeated form. That's right. Or it's a rhyme. Yes. A rhyme. Yeah. Either it's the same exact word or phrase or it's a rhyming word. Yeah. And for that, what is he talking about? And how do you render and what it is you've just translated for us? Sure. Sure. Maybe I'll do the second one first. This is from Gold. I'm not that lion battling an enemy. Confronting myself keeps me busy enough. I am the soil, love seeds. Roses and lilies bloom from this mud. I ached from separation. I cloaked myself in night, emerged a shining moon. Consumed in love's fire, I slip through any opening. I rise like smoke. I am a child and love is my teacher, waking me from ignorance. Like love, I will live on, radiant and eternal, when eating and sleeping are done. Speaker 1 (12:51) Till then, like Lubach, the master musician, I quiet my mind and listen. In silence, your body becomes spirit. Speaker 1 (13:04) Beautiful. There's an absolute ecstasy every time I hear him, every time I hear him through you. Do you feel the same after so much scholarship and translation of him? He's alive with being alive, it seems. Yeah. I love trans. I love reciting and I love singing him. I mean, I don't tire of it. There's such a... such beauty and such honesty and sincerity. There's such an ecstatic love and there's also such a sincerity. I mean, he loves humanity. He's frustrated with humanity. He loves the earth. He's frustrated with, you know, with how we carry on, you know, and he's not afraid to say it and he's not afraid to save his own, speak of his own, you know, issues with this challenging experiment of being human, you know, being matter and spirit. He will speak about it all, you know, Speaker 1 (13:59) And he will go into the ecstatic and he will promise us that we are at the root of the root of the root of our beings. Love. That the primordial force is love. You know, he says, all mass, bald mass, caulk mass, gnar mass, water is drunk. Air is drunk. Earth is drunk. Fire is drunk. You know, the meadow is drunk. The buds and thorns are all drunk. Imagination is drunk. Intellect is drunk. And the mysteries of existence and the mysteries of eternity, sorry, the mysteries of eternity, they're the drunkest of all. Liberate yourself. Liberate yourself from the tyranny of self. Be humble as soil and you will see every particle of soil is drunk on love by the creator's design. So it's like, not that we always feel these things. We don't walk around typically feeling drunk on love, but he's telling me. Speaker 1 (14:59) That is actually at the root of the root of all this. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. You know, there is a love that pulses through us. You know, how else does green sprout from the Earth's dark body, he asks. But that there's some force that wants to live. And that you can call this divine love,