Tags: Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks

Tell me a story: Coleman Barks remembered in poetry and friendship

In Athens, May arrives with chapel bells, crowded sidewalks, final papers, graduation photographs, and the strange awareness that something important is ending just as something new begins. Few writers understood that feeling better than Coleman Barks.  Barks, Athens poet, translator of Rumi, and professor emeritus of English in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, died Feb. 23, 2026, at age 88. Yet even months after his…
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Unscripted: Coleman Barks on the poetry of Rumi

We've posted a new Unscripted podcast episode, a conversation with UGA emeritus professor of English Coleman Barks about his life and work: The author of twenty-one volumes, including the bestselling “Essential Rumi” (1995) and “Rumi: The Big Red Book” (2010), which collects 34 years of his work on Rumi’s ghazals and rubai, Coleman Barks has spent the past sixty years exploring the possibilities of American ecstatic poetry through his…
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