Intimacies of the Ear: Creative Practices of Translation

Kythe Heller is a poet, essayist, interdisciplinary artist, and scholar of comparative religion and philosophy whose work spans text, film, sound, performance, translation, and multimedia social practice. She holds a doctorate in the Study of Religion from Harvard University, with a secondary field in Art, Film, and Visual Studies–Critical Media Practice, as well as an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a B.A. in English Literature from Reed College. Her books include Firebird (Arrowsmith Press), nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award, and the award-winning bilingual anthology The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow / El alma se mueve en la sombra (Stenen Press), co-edited with Carolina Gómez-Montoya and recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards, PubWest Book Design Awards, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, and Foreword INDIES. Her poetry and creative work have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Jacket2, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and The Southern Review, among other venues, while her scholarly writing on mysticism, poetics, the phenomenology of religious experience, sound, and contemporary art has appeared in Cambridge University Press volumes, the Akron Series in Experimental Poetics, Forecast Journal, Religious Studies Review, and the Harvard Divinity School Graduate Journal. Her film, performance, and installation work has been presented across the United States and Canada, including at Symphony Space and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room.

Heller has received fellowships, residencies, grants, and commissions from The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Mellon Foundation, Harvard University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. She has taught at Harvard University, Villanova University, and Bard College, where she serves on the faculty of the Language & Thinking Program. She is the founder and Creative Director of Vision Lab, an international institute for experimental artistic practice, contemplative inquiry, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Conceived as a laboratory for the future of the human spirit, Vision Lab brings artists, scholars, and practitioners into sustained collaboration across art, spirituality, social and ecological transformation, and pro-social technologies—cultivating forms of attention, inquiry, and creative practice responsive to the complexities of the present moment.