Why is the world burning and what can poetry do?

This is our unabridged interview with Haleh Liza Gafori.

Haleh Liza Gafori joins us for part two of a three-part series asking the question posed by poet Christian Wiman: What is poetry’s role when the world is burning?

It’s not a metaphorical question. We’re living through wars, climate collapse, collective burnout, and political fragmentation. What possibly might human flourishing mean in such a context? And what might poetry have to do with it? 

Here, Haleh Liza Gafori—poet, musician, and translator—guides us into the world of the Sufi poet Rumi. We explore how his 13th-century Persian verse still speaks to the modern crises of anxiety, spiritual disconnection, materialism, and self-repression. But this isn’t just about literary history. For Gafori, Rumi has been a companion in healing, a guide through spiritual trauma, ego detachment, and the tyranny of the self.

We discuss poetry as a political act, a mystical practice, and a form of social critique. We look at how Iranian-American identity, religious fundamentalism, and Western imperialism shape the psyche—and how mystical poetry can help us see through, and beyond, these entanglements. We ask what it means to live a good life when the systems around us are built on fear and greed—and what role language, art, theology and ecstatic love can play in imagining something different.

Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ of our abridged episode with Haleh Liza Gafori on her translation of Rumi⁠⁠⁠

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No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness.

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Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠@leeccamp ⁠

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