rumi roaming: contemporary engagements and interventions

rumi roaming
A Publication Project Curated and Edited by Gita Hashemi

Praised as a “ground-breaking endeavor” and a “masterful intervention,” Gita Hashemi’s curatorial/editorial publication project rumi roaming: contemporary engagements and interventions is a unique multi-platform, multi-disciplinary, and multi-language expanded book that includes all new work by twenty-one Canadian and international artists, poets, writers, and scholars. This is a rich, creative, and critical re-reading of the best-selling and much (mis)translated popular poet in English language, the 13th century Sufi master Rumi, approached here as a shared cultural space within contemporary contexts of translingual poetics and translation politics, Indigenous language revitalization and diasporic language reclamation, and interrogations of spirituality, healing, and social justice.

rumi roaming spread, Hišukʔiš C̓awaak: Exploring Rumi through Nuučanuł by Hjalmer Wenstob, Tim Masso, and Annika Benoit-Jansson, artwork by Hjalmer Wenstob

rumi roaming juxtaposes new translations of some of Rumi’s ghazals with contemporary creative non-fiction, poetry, scholarly essays, photo essays, and performance and art videos, in a print volume interlinked to a publicly accessible online repository. Inviting readers to think about Rumi in lowercase and as a dynamic cross-cultural force, rumi roaming brings together Indigenous, migrant, settler descendant, refugee, and transnational contributors from Turtle Island, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, India, Syria, Egypt, Italy, Cuba, Morocco, and Mexico including Zainab Amadahy, Elena Basile, Carly Butler, Radha D’Souza, Masoud Eskandari, Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet, Hajar Hussaini, Fatemeh Keshavarz, Nika Khanjani, Ehab Lotayef, ML Papusa Molina, Mahdi Tourage, Trish Salah, Jayce Salloum, Gita Hashemi, charles c. smith with Meryem Alaoui, Öykü Tekten, and Hjalmer Wenstob with Annika Benoit-Jansson and Tim Masso.

rumi roaming video screen, Between Shadow and Light, live performance and video, poetry by charles c. smith, movement by Meryem Alaoui, directed and edited by Gita Hashemi

View the video preview of the print and online volumes

rumi roaming: contemporary engagements and interventions
Curated and edited by Gita Hashemi
Poetry and translation editor: Elena Basile
First edition
Released: April 2025
Published by SubversivePress in partnership with Guernica Editions
Distributed by the University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 978-1-77183-970-9
Price: $39.95 CAD / $29.95 USD / £22.95

Includes:
Print volume:
Size: 10 x 8 in (254 x 203 mm)
Softcover, 200 pages
Includes 9 new translations of rumi’s poems, 2 photo essays, 2 auto-ethnographies, 5 critical essays, 1 interview, 5 poem cycles, 2 creative essays

Online volume, linked to from the print volume:
4 art videos, 2 performance videos, 16 poetry readings in audio, 1 behind-the-scenes video

Order the Book:
Canada and US
Guernica Editions
University of Toronto Press

International
Independent Publishers Group

rumi roaming spread, Broken Hands and Feet: A Transmission of Rumi’s Ghazal 2131 Across Generations, Countries, Time Zones, and Centuries, video by Nika Khanjani

About the Curator and Editor
Artist, curator, and writer Gita Hashemi is a refugee who works from T’karonto, the “Dish with One Spoon” wampum belt territory, the land of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. She lives near Wonscotonach River. Her home in Shiraz was near Khoshk River. She works in visual, media and performance art, digital and net art, and language-based art including live embodied calligraphy, as well as in curation and publishing. Her practice is distinguished by transdisciplinary and multi-platform approaches that are generative, and often collaborative and/or participatory. She is currently working on a new expanded book, Fugitive Transmissions: Tales of Enduring Transience, forthcoming in 2027. Her award-winning performance and installation project Grounding: States of Gender is on exhibit at the artLAB at Western University, January 8 – 29.

About SubversivePress
Started in 2004, SubversivePress is an independent artistic platform for producing and disseminating decolonial work in print, IRL, and/or online. We focus on generative transdisciplinary, transmedia, and translingual projects that intervene in specific fields by opening alternative spaces of engagement. Our work to date has included projects that have addressed colonial geopolitics, marginalized historical narratives, gender-based violence, and cultural appropriation. Our current focus is on producing “expanded books,” multi-platform works in print, IRL (in real life) and online. rumi roaming: contemporary engagements and interventions is our latest project, published in collaboration with Guernica Editions, with permanent online media hosting by York University Libraries. Our forthcoming expanded books will be released in fall 2027, 2028, and 2029.

subversivepress.org

Acknowledgements
rumi roaming project was funded by the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Guernica Editions is additionally funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Government, and the Government of Canada.