21 min
Talk
Opening the Heart Through Ecstatic Poetry
Twenty minutes at TEDxUGA, and the shortest way into his reading voice.
About the teacher
Coleman Barks
American poet (1937–2026) who taught literature at the University of Georgia for three decades and became the best-known English voice of Rumi. He was a student of the Sufi shaykh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. He neither spoke nor read Persian and worked from earlier English translations, and his versions have been criticised for leaving Rumi's Islam out of the poems.
Talks & videos
Watch.
Short introductions and longer conversations, to hear this teacher in their own words.
63 min
Interview
Rumi, Grace and Human Friendship
An hour on friendship as the centre of Rumi's work, and on what a translator owes the original.
68 min
Talk
The Music of Our Meeting
An evening of Rumi read aloud, with what he learned from Bawa Muhaiyaddeen woven through it.
108 min
Talk
Rumi and the Play of Poetry
Nearly two hours of reading and talking about how the poems came into English.
Path
The wider context.
✦
Love & remembrance
Sufism
A mystical path of love, remembrance, poetry and inner refinement.
Explore the path →
