29th June 2019, Bradford Cathedral

At this Bradford Literature Festival event in the beautiful Bradford Cathedral, Professor Eric Ormsby introduced the Divans of Hafiz and Goethe, and then a number of the contemporary poets contributing to Gingko’s A New Divan, including Fatemeh Shams and Mourid Barghouti, read their original compositions. The English-language versions of these new poems were read by Narguess Farzad and the British poet George Szirtes.

The conversation in poetry was matched by a musical dialogue drawing on Hafiz poems set to music by the composers Franz Schubert, Gottfried von Einem and Viktor Ullmann, performed by Simon Wallfisch and Craig White.

Audio courtesy of Bradford Cathedral.