The Conference Of the Birds
Considered by Rumi to be "the master" of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for his epic poem The Conference of the Birds, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul’s search for meaning.
The poem recounts the perilous journey of the world’s birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf—a mythical mountain that wraps around the earth—in search of the mysterious Simurgh, their king. Attar’s beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, and the religious with the metaphysical. Reflecting the entire evolution of Sufi mystic tradition, Attar’s poem models the soul’s escape from the mind’s rational embrace.
About the Translator / Re-creator:
Sholeh Wolpé is an award-winning poet in English as well as an award-winning translator. She re-creates the intense beauty of the original Persian in contemporary English verse and poetic prose, fully capturing for the first time the beauty and timeless wisdom of Attar’s masterpiece for modern readers.
Poet Sholeh Wolpé honors the enduring wisdom of Attar’s twelfth-century, Sufi epic, “The Conference of the Birds.” Through her lauded translation, or recreation, of the poem and a newly developed musical performance, The Seven Valleys, Wolpé brings Attar's story of the search for divine meaning to new audiences.
Sholeh Wolpé performs The Seven Valley from Attar’s The Conference of the Birds at The Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles
