Recent&Upcoming

NEW!! backforward collective (heather hermant & diane roberts) Personal Legacy Summer Training Intensive

We're now accepting applications! See flyer below

POETRY WORKSHOPS: BOOK NOW!!!

Bring poetry workshops to your classroom this year: From computer science class, to history class, to drama and English, make performance pieces, incorporate digital technologies, in class, in school, for credit!

Heather is an Ontario Arts Council Artist in Education for the 2007-2008 school year. Teachers and principals anywhere in Ontario who are interested in "Canadian History and Me: Re-imagining through poetry in performance", a poetry performance approach to archives, oral history and Canadian histories, can book Heather to do workshops with their students. Send an email for more info!

2007

Canadian Auto Workers Youth Conference poetry slam: October 27, Port Elgin, Ontario. With (... against) Lawrence Mante aka Martial Law, Truth Is, Mike Smith aka White Noise Machine and Alicia Murrin. A FIRST for the CAW, poetry at a national conference! Shout outs to organisers, and all the youth from across the country who gave us so much love! Congrats to winner White Noise Machine, and to the rest of the awesome crew.

'ribcage: this wide passage' is nearing production, following a research trip to France in April 2007, and a residency at the Gibraltar Point International Artists' Residency on Toronto Island in June 2007. A solo poetry theatre performance with directorial collaborator Diane Roberts and videography collaborator Melina Young, the project is a video installation meets spoken word theatre meets soundscape generating and site specific intervention... piece based on Esther Brandeau, the first Jew to arrive in what is now Canada. Brandeau lived as a Christian man for years before being outed upon arrival in New France in 1738 and subsequently deported. Produced by backforward collective in association with urban ink. More about ribcage coming here soon. Thanks to Toronto, Ontario and Canada Councils.

Heather co-curated with Melina Young, Summer in Shanghai, a program of queer independent Canadian video, for Shanghai's first unofficial Pride Week, and led video production workshops with Melina for the collectively created Need a ride?, a video short directed by Ana Huang, produced by Heather and Melina and now carried by VTape, Canada's largest distributor of indie video. Thanks to VTape and Canada Council.

Third place at Mayworks Festival 2007 Workforce Poetry Slam, Toronto

Ongoing work with Diane Roberts on the Personal Legacy Project case study for the VIVA! Project, a transnational collaboration on community arts and popular education across the Americas. Highlights have included working in Mexico City with community arts muralist and Zapatista solidarity worker Checovaldez, encuentros in Panama and Chiapas and upcoming work in solidarity with VIVA! partner project BilwiVision in the autonomous Atlantic coast of Nicaragua devastated by a hurricane in September 2007.

RHYME Poetry Collective update: From humble beginnings, SPIN's vision, through SPIN and Heather's co-mentoring, workshops with Klyde Broox and others, to the publication of RHYME's anthology Guerrillas of the Word, to way beyond, this group of awesome people continues to reach youth across Toronto. Boonaa, Helen and SPIN were on Toronto TWO team that finished second nationally at the Canadian Spoken Word Festival in 2006 in Toronto. RHYME is now working on two funded youth spoken word projects in schools and community, toward a chapbook, a web site and a Slam network. These projects, funded by Laidlaw Foundation and ArtReach Toronto, have been the catalysts for FULL YOUTH LEADERSHIP of RHYME!! For more info on RHYME, send an email to RHYME Coordinator La Revolucionaria

Other stuff:

random journal sound installation made with Sydney Hermant was on at the Ontario Science Centre winter 2007, as part of an exhibition with video artist Katia Houde.

2006

2006 publication about work with youth in Bosnia in the anthology 'Wild Fire: Art as Activism' from Sumach Press in Toronto.

2004

Heather's video poem collaboration with filmmaker Gergely Benyi and dancer Eva Magyar was screened at See the Voice: An Evening of Visible Verse , at Vancouver's Pacific Cinemateque in November 2004.

Heather competed at the inaugural Canadian Spoken Wordlympics in Ottawa in Fall 2004.

Heather performed at The Red School House Poetry Primer in Desmond, Ontario in August 2004.

She competed in the CBC Radio National Poetry Face-Off in March 2004, alongside SPIN, Louise Bak, Gary Barwin and d.bi young, the winner.