Haleh Liza Gafori is a performance artist, translator, vocalist, poet, and composer born in NYC of Persian descent. Her acclaimed book of translations, GOLD, Poems by Rumi was published by New York Review Books in 2022, and her second volume WATER will be released on April 22, 2025, also by NYRB 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.
Regarding GOLD, 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, who wrote the book is “bound to go on nourishing generations to come.”
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 also uncovering how deeply and urgently the poetry dialogues with our times.
Sharing her passion for Rumi’s poetry, Gafori has presented her musical cross-media piece, lectures, readings, and craft workshops at universities, festivals, and institutions including Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Sarah Lawrence College, Lincoln Center, Omega Institute, Le Poisson Rouge, Joe’s Pub, the Bradford Literary Fest, and the New York Public Library.
Of her seminars at the Academy of American Poets, Executive Director Ricardo Maldonado, said “I have never seen this kind of enthusiasm for a class and teacher.”
Gafori’s writings and translations have been published by Harvard Review, Columbia University Press, the Brooklyn Rail, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her own book of poetry.
Gafori received her BS in Biology from Stanford U and her MFA from CCNY in Poetry, where she completed a thesis of original poems as well as translations of the Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri, for which she received an Academy of American Poets Prize.
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
United Nations, International Migrants Day
UN Women Champions for Change, Harmonie Club, NYC
Judson Memorial Church, with Ecstatic Dance
Bryant Park Reading Series
Joe’s Pub
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
Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School
Oxbridge Academic Programs at Barnard
Moravian Academy
The Tibet House
City of Asylum
The New School, Glassbox Theater, with Women Between the Arts
Magnetic Theater
Epsilon Spires
Flood Gallery
Omega Institute
WorldFest
Lara Anderson Museum
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Mimi Festival of Marseilles
Angel Orensanz Center, with YRSL
Deepak Homebase
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