translator, writer, performance artist, and educator
GOLD
POEMS BY RUMI, TRANSLATIONS BY HALEH LIZA GAFORI
New York Review Books - Classics / Penguin Random House
March, 2022
“This new translation preserves the radical intelligence and the ecstatic drama of poems that are as full of individual character as they are of visionary wisdom.” - New York Review Books
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s energetic translation highlights the timelessness of Rumi’s work, delivering unforgettable phrases. Rumi’s introspective nature…cosmic vision…and deeply contemplative yet accessible poems star in this worthy translation.” - Publishers Weekly
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s Gold is everything Rumi was himself—sacred, profane, laugh out loud funny, deeply earnest, demotic, and yes, Persian. There’s a rich fluency here not just in idiom but in gesture, in spirit. What a gift this is, what gold.”- Kaveh Akbar, Poetry Editor at The Nation
“Haleh Liza Gatori’s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.”
- V(formerly Eve Ensler)
“A dazzling selection of his poetry, including some never previously alive in English, appears in Gold, newly translated and inspirited by poet and musician Haleh Liza Gafori…[the book] will go nourishing generations to come”- Maria Popova, The Marginalian
”Haleh Liza Gafori’s translations of Rumi are exquisite. Gorgeous, fluent, faithful translations, rendering Rumi’s voice on the page with an original integrity that is as skilled as it is unforgettable. - Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound
“Haleh Liza Gafori’s new translations of Rumi are 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, best of all, a marvelous poet in English.”
- Marilyn Hacker, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets ‘08-’14
“In this eloquent, faithful translation of the popular 13th-century poet and mystic Rumi, Persian American poet and musician Gafori opens a fresh window on Rumi’s spiritual quest and his urgent invitation to readers to embrace a more enlightened existence. Ecstatic, spinning lines wind through mystical paradoxes—wordless speaker, footless runner, placeless place—toward a sense of wonder and oceanic love.” - Library Journal
WATER
POEMS BY RUMI, TRANSLATIONS BY HALEH LIZA GAFORI
New York Review Books - Classics / Penguin Random House
April, 2025
