Staff from KKV together with Olaf Gundersen from Mimeta together with Masha Vadat at Persepolis from 500 BCSufism and the encounters that Sufism facilitates encounters with God, love, and the deepest aspects of human consciousness, have evoked feelings in Sufis that have poured out through their ravaged hearts onto their lucid tongues, providing us with some of the most beautiful and profound poetry ever written. Sufi poetry can be a way of dialogue between different civilisations. There is a strong humanitarian heritage in the classical Sufi poetry dictated by great poets like Rumi, Hafez, Khayyam and Saadi, all of them having cultural heritage from Persia.
Mimeta will also be funding KKV’s production of a recording of Sufi poems. The music is by Tord Gustavsen and is performed by SKRUK and Mahsa Vahdat. The recording will be released during the International Church Festival in Kristiansand, Norway 20 – 21 August 2010.
At the end of April Olaf Gundersen had the pleasure of a study trip to Iran together with the staff from KKV. The group visited Teheran, Esfahan and Shiraz and met nice Iranian people, musicians, painters and authors. Olaf Gundersen and KKV also got the opportunity to experience the considerable importance the poet Hafez, who lived about 700 years ago, has in Iran today.
Iranian artist Mahsa Vahdat and Norwegian producer Erik Hillestad have been translating 100 Hafez poems into Norwegian. Forlaget Press (publishers) will be releasing the poems in both Persian and Norwegian language in a beautiful book funded by Mimeta and Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV). Additionally a CD with Sufi poems will be released.
