Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian/Persian descent. She grew up hearing recitations of Persian poetry and has maintained and deepened her connection through singing and translating the poetry of various Persian poets. Her book, GOLD, translations of poems by Rumi, the 13th century sage and mystic. GOLD was released in 2022 by New York Review Books/NYRB Classics, distributed by Penguin Random House.
Poet and long-time Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Marilyn Hacker describes GOLD as, “the work of someone who is at once an acute and enamored reader of the original Farsi text, a dedicated miner of context and backstory, and a marvelous poet in English,” while Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of On Being’s podcast Poetry Unbound calls her translations, “Gorgeous, fluent, faithful…rendering Rumi’s voice on the page with an original integrity that is as skilled as it is unforgettable.” GOLD was chosen as a Favorite Book of 2022 by Maria Popova at the Marginalian, and declared one of those books “bound to go on nourishing generations to come.”
A bicultural woman with ears tuned to American poetry 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 the music of contemporary American poetry. Supported by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, Gafori has created a cross-media performance piece based on GOLD, weaving translations, original text, and musical compositions sung in Persian and English. The piece debuted at the New York Public Library in 2023 for World Heritage Month.
Sharing her passion for the expansive, compassionate, and ecstatic nature of Rumi’s poetry and philosophy, Gafori has presented the work at universities, festivals, and institutions including Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Sarah Lawrence College, Bradford Literary Fest, the Lincoln Center Poetry Festival, Bryant Park Reading Series, and Omega Institute. GOLD has been incorporated into the curriculum at various universities including Stanford University, Colorado St University, St Joseph’s University, Houghton College, and St. Olaf’s College.
Gafori’s own work has been published by Columbia University Press, is forthcoming in the Harvard Review, and has been featured on Literary Hub, The Marginalian, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere.
In current and past musical projects, including Haale and The Mast, Gafori has toured across the US and in Europe, playing events such as One Note at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, and the Bonnaroo Festival. She has released a few albums to critical acclaim, from which songs have appeared in NBC’s series “Life” and CWTV’s series “The Originals.” In 2018-2019, she translated, composed, and performed in the collaborative multi-media project called “Ask Hafez,” supported by the Queens Council on the Arts.
Gafori received her BS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and her MFA in creative writing from CCNY where she completed a thesis of original poems as well as translations of the Persian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Omran Salahi for which she received an Academy of American Poets Prize and a Goodman Grant. For the poetry journal Rattapallax, Gafori served as a guest editor for a section on New Persian Poetry.
Past presentations offered at theaters, universities, and high schools including:
Stanford University
Sarah Lawrence College
Swarthmore College
St. Joseph’s University, The Writer’s Foundry MFA Program
Bard College at the Summer Faculty, Language, and Thinking Program
Lincoln Center Poetry Festival
Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, Hearst Plaza and Pregones Theater
Lincoln Center Atrium
Celebrate Brooklyn, opening for Salif Keita
Carnegie Hall, One Note Series curated by David Byrne
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, for “Water and Ice”
Dartmouth University, Rollins Chapel
University of Cincinnati
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Warren Wilson College
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater, BFA Program
The New School, Glassbox Theater, with Women Between the Arts
Magnetic Theater
Flood Gallery
Omega Institute
WorldFest
Mimi Festival of Marseilles
Angel Orensanz Center, with YRSL
United Nations, International Migrants Day
UN Women Champions for Change, Harmonie Club, NYC
Judson Memorial Church, with Ecstatic Dance
Joe’s Pub
Deepak Homebase
Moravian Academy
AS220 Youth Studio
City Lore
Wanderlust Festival
Taos Poetry Festival
Jean Cocteau Theater, with Worlds Through Words
Mindful Poetry Gathering at The Well
Brooklyn Music School
The Poet’s Settlement
KGB, The Red Room
Society for Ethical Culture
Bowery Poetry Club