New Performance on Video and Poetry in Print
Heather recently performed her spoken word songs at the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, featured as one of five "Wild Women." She is third up in the first video segment after Elyse and Deanna (at 0:40:00).
She is also featured in the new Sheri-D Wilson edited Spoken Word Workbook (Banff Centre Press) with an essay called Sideways, along with bill bissett, Paul Dutton, Ian Ferrier, John Giorno, Bob Holman, Kaie Kellough, Billeh Nickerson, Robert Priest, Anne Waldman and many others.
Heather's videopoem Purple Lipstick screened in Montreal
The video was included in the Wired On Words event featuring women poets
Heather Haley in the Cultural Olympiad
Heather participaged in the Real Vancouver Writers Series at W2.
Real Vancouver Writers - February 17, 2010
Heather participated in this event, and appears on this video along with other performers.
Edmonton Poetry Festival Buzz
Heather is still glowing after the reception she received at the Edmonton Poetry Festival and a successful series of performances, a panel and a workshop. As a veteran arts administrator she was very impressed with how well-organized the festival was, the people as warm as northern Alberta is cold. Pamela Anthony was a very charming and kind host and performing with the Raving Poets at the Roar Lit Crawl was a blast. Heather met some amazing people and made lots of vital connections with artists like Thomas Trofimuk (www.thomastrofimuk.com), Richard Stevenson, Shima Aisha Robinson, Sheila Murphy, Jeff Carpenter, Philip Jagger, Chris Craddock, James Carson, Jack McCarthy, Alice Major, Devona Stevenson, Linda Huffman, Manuel Sinor, and got to hang out with Tippy A Go Go and one of her favourite poets, rob mclennan, who is currently writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
Random Acts Wrapped
Random Acts of Poetry week just wrapped up featuring Bowen Island poets Bernice Lever, Jude Neal and Lisa Shatsky as well as Heather — though she may have a few more guerilla poems up her sleeve for unsuspecting Bowenites. Keep an eye out!
About.com features Habitat
Heather Haley's poem "Habitat" from her new book "Window Seat" was selected by About.Com/Poetry
Summer Poems: A collection of classic & new poems for the season
A collection of poems for summer, including an anonymous medieval lyric and classics by Thomas Nashe, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, John Greenleaf Whittier, John Clare, Amy Lowell & Gerard Manley Hopkins, plus new poems from contemporary poets around the world.
Performing and Workshops at the Edmonton Poetry Festival
Heather is a busy media poet at the Edmonton Poetry Festival, Sept. 20-22 where she will be facilitating a SEE THE VOICE Visible Verse workshop on creating videopoem; participating in the screening of videopoems at “Open your Eyes to the Word”; performing at the Roar LitCrawl on Friday with the Raving Poets band; and will be a featured speaker and panelist at Word! Symposium: ”Hear This live and personal”; and then performing again at the Word! Gala, Sat, Sept. 22, 8:00 pm.
In Memory of Visionary Poet Merilene M. Murphy
Sadly, our dear friend and colleague Merilene M. Murhpy died in Los Angeles of complications due to lung cancer on February 2, 2007. She was only 51 years old. A tribute to Merilene well be held Sunday, March 18th, 2007 @ 2 pm at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd in Venice, California. Merilene's sister Diane Murphy is asking people to contact her on her cell phone if they need more information: 310-392-5555.
World Poetry Café
Heather is the featured artist for the month of January at The World Poetry Café. It's hosted by Ariadne Sawyer every Tuesday night from 9-10 pm on CFRO 102.7 FM and on the Internet. The show is in English and Spanish and has listeners in 10 countries. Lend an ear and you'll like it.
Poem Published in Vancouver Review
The poem 'Window Seat' from Heather's upcoming book was published in The Vancouver Review. If you can't get the magazine, you can read 'Window Seat' here.
Purple Lipstick in Los Angeles 'Heathers' Show
Heather's video Purple Lipstick was included in the show I Am A Heather, an exhibition and online display based around artists with the same name.
Heather Haley Sees Purple
in Buenos Aires and Berlin
Haley's new videopoem, Purple Lipstick, is quickly garnering kudos, having been selected by VideoBardo 2nd International VideoPoetry Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the 3rd Zebra International Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, Germany (from among over 600 entries). Completed in July, it features actors Bazil Graham, Ripley and Cairo Ferguson and accomplished performance poet, Alexandra Oliver-Basekic.
Purple is the colour of a fresh bruise and domestic violence the single greatest cause of injury to women in Canada. Purple Lipstick confronts its insidious nature with compelling, visceral juxtapositions. A woman's disembodied voice recites language vivid and absurd against a backdrop of banality, images of normalcy. A wife and mother prepares dinner, still in her uniform, numbing isolation invoked with an excruciating tension. Inherent terror, brutality, is only alluded to. "I wouldn't have depicted the murder even if I'd had a huge budget," explains the director. "What the viewer's mind imagines has far more impact."
Haley has long cultivated poetry through media. Her life has shifted modes through the years, from performing in the post-punk underground and spoken word scenes to writing and childrearing on Bowen Island. In recent years, she has hosted and curated See The Voice: Visible Verse at Pacific Cinémathèque, North America's sustaining venue for the presentation of artistically significant poetry film and video. At the same time, she's developed her own art. Anvil Press published Sideways, in 2003. Surfing Season, an audio CD produced by Roderick Shoolbraid, was released in 2004, along with Dying For the Pleasure, her first videopoem, which she defines as a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
Purple Lipstick will screen in Vancouver Nov. 16 at Pacific Cinémathèque. One of Haley's primary goals is to find and/or establish niche marketing and distribution for media poetry, in all its guises.
For more information or preview copies, please contact Executive Producer, Josef Roehrl.
Big Project!
Haley is currrently archiving all her media. This polaroid was taken at Zuma Beach, Malibu, by her boyfriend of the time, visual artist Jeff Isaak, (brother of Chris.) A denizen of nightclubs, galleries and coffee houses, Heather's well-cultivated pallor was often ridiculed by Southern California's sun bunnies and surfers. She may well have the last laugh. Many of them have succumbed to melanoma or possess skin resembling elephant hide.
Haley's poetry is currently on display at the Vancouver Public Library as part of the World Poetry Fifth Anniversary Celebration. She recently completed a residency at Banff Centre for the Arts' Wired Writing Studio working with Karen Solie under the directorship of Fred Stenson. She is over the hump with her new poetry manuscript, momentum now working in her favour. A new cd, "Aural Heather Haley," produced by Roderick Shoolbraid, is expected to be completed by the end of July. A launch and other live shows are in the works, including Toronto and Montreal in early October.
See The Voice
Announcing...
Visible Verse 2006 call for videopoems
UPDATE: View the press release and program for Visible Verse 2006
Pacific Cinémathèque and curator Heather Haley are seeking videopoem submissions from around the world for the annual Visible Verse screening and performance poetry celebration. Visible Verse is North America's sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry.
Official guidelines:
- Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world, however.
- Pieces will be judged on true literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please, do not send documentaries, as they are outside the featured genre.
- Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
- Submission deadline is 1 September, 2006.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200--1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified by 1 October, 2006 and receive a screening fee. For more information contact Heather Haley at: heatherhaley.com or by e-mail.
Vancouver's Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique, a not-for-profit society dedicated to the understanding of film and moving images. www.cinematheque.bc.ca
"Heather Haley is a well-established presenter of poetry video in Vancouver. An instigator of poetry video production and appreciation in Canada, Haley and the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre convened the original Vancouver Videopoem Festival in 1999. That festival became critically regarded owing to the its progressive regard for spoken word in cinema. The 2000 festival, for example, presented many poets both in performance and on the big screen. The audience could see for themselves the merits and distinctions of poetry rendered in time in these two forms, stage versus screen. The festival then built upon that critical base, with widened explorations into poetry cinema across national frontiers. They presented significant new works from Europe and the Americas, and continued to offer Canadian audiences a remarkably broad selection of new videopoems from their own country. And owing to Vancouver's strength in the film and television production industries, Haley has been able to cultivate critical interest between filmmakers and poets, with positive consequences for both."-Kurt Heintz, Director, e-poets.
Visible Verse 2005 at Pacific Cinémathèque.
Read the press release, including last year's program.
Visible Verse 2004 was well received and garnered several write-ups in the local media. Please see the Press Room. For more information, please contact curator Heather Haley, at hshaley@emspace.com, or www.heatherhaley.com
Hear the voice(s)
SURFING SEASON, Heather's CD of spoken word and music, can be purchased right here through your Pay Pal account. Poesey Beat, at poeseybeat.org, says, "Canadian poet Heather Haley is doing some important work with poetry and media," and Ian Ferrier of Wired on Words said, "This is a strong, beautiful piece of work, a real credit for the genre."
Kurt Heintz of e-poets is also very enthusiastic about Surfing
Season:
"Canadian media poet and musician Heather Haley takes
center stage at e-poets.net,with two very sizeable features. Buzz
around the 'net suggests that Surfing Seasonis already creating a
positive stir in Canada and elsewhere. And we're glad tohave had a
hand in that! It's well worth auditioning, and has no connection
whatsoeverto the Beach Boys. Well, there is a feminist commentary on
male adolescence ontrack #3, but that's about as close as it gets."
e-poets has the album for your auditioning pleasure
in Haley's Book of Voices profile. That's followed up by an
in-depth interview with the artist.
www.voices.e-poets.net/HaleyH/
The two-part (and outspoken!) interview with Heather in Plain Text that covers the album and Heather Haley's creative life: www.e-poets.net/PlainText/page04-005a.shtml
Read about previous news and events in the Older News Archive