Heather Haley

Heather Haley has origins in the punk music experience of late 20th century Los Angeles, and in her upbringing on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. Her childhood had a pre-consciously intermedia manner; she actively drew pictures, sang in her church choir, and wrote. So it's little surprise to see her full adult force come to bear on poetry and media, particularly as a proponent of their interaction in Canada and in the world.

Heather Haley, poet and video producer

creative videos: Purple Lipstick

Haley's creative nature gives her an explorer's life. Her Los Angeles experiences brought her in touch with Merilene Murphy and the Telepoetics poetry/videophone connections; Haley was Murphy's first collaborator outside the U.S. whem Murphy began these link-ups on her own in 1994. This connection also brought Haley into early contact with Kurt Heintz, publisher of this website.

As a singer and musician, Haley always enjoyed a fundamental connection with creative wordsmithing. But in the 1990s, Haley took on this activity with true zeal. She founded the Edgewise Café and ElectroLit Centre, an electronic zine with live-event tendencies, which quickly found recognition in Canada as a connecting point between the wired, verbal, and printed domains. Presentations brought Haley into contact with Western Front (Pacific Canada's major media/arts presenter), which cast her output in a critique of new media. Her interests in poetry broadened her creative partnerships further, through the Vancouver Videopoem Festival. Eventually called "See the Voice" and presented through her enterprise, Visible Verse, Haley's curation of this festival has drawn an international stream of poetry to the screen for West Coast audiences since 1999. Therein, artists and critics alike have found ways to deepen the consideration of their works, as a scholarly- and creatively-informed videopoetry critique arose directly out of these festivals.

Haley has issued collections of poetry Sideways (2003) and Three Blocks West of Wonderland (2009); poetry videos Dieing for the Pleasure (2003), Purple Lipstick (2006), How to Remain (2010), Bushwhack (2010), and Whore in the Eddy (2012); and poetry in many print journals including Antigonish Review, the Vancouver Review, Geist, Northern Lights, On The Bus, Heresies, High Performance (performance art journal), and Medusa. She also appears in The Verse Map of Vancouver and The Verdict Is In. She has appearned by videophone to speak at Digital Arts and Culture in Atlanta (1998), and has numerous electronic publications to her credit.

Her website is heatherhaley.com, with biographical information about her and her creative works, including videos. Audio recordings of her poetry, arranged with critical care per her own musical interests, are also on the e-poets website, in the Book of Voices.

- Kurt Heintz, 2012