kevin andrew heslop.
(b. 1992, Canada) wrote The Writing on the Wind's Wall: Dialogues about 'Medical Assistance in Dying' (The Porcupine's Quill), the rules of grammar will not save you at the hour of your death (with Roxanna Bennett, Baseline Press), and the correct fury of your why is a mountain (Gordon Hill Press); directed the award-winning Ripley's Aquarium, White, Things She Wants, and a dozen more short films; and co-created the exhibitions of and (with Leslie Putnam, Centre [3]), in medias res (with Derek Boswell, Westland Gallery) and six feet between us (McIntosh Gallery). His films, poetry, fiction, art criticism, and dialogues have appeared with periodicals and festivals around the world. More.
Conducted February, 2024.
Published by Parrot Art, July, 2024.
Photo of Leite de Pedra, Performative Installation, May 2023, Canteiro, São Paulo, Brazil.
This wabi-sabi-inspired work eroded in Wortley Village, London, Canada throughout the month of May 2022 as a meditation on material and aesthetic impermanence and the social disintegration caused by human response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Detail.
Kevin Andrew Heslop was born to Lisa Kathleen and Kevin William Heslop on July 22nd, 1992 at St. Joseph's Hospital in London, Canada.
His earliest professional work as a drummer at 14 was followed by works of poetry including there is no minor violence just as there is no negligible cough during an aria and the correct fury of your why is a mountain, hailed as "among the most promising poetic projects to come out of Canada in recent years" by leading poet and critic Jim Johnstone and "read with admiration" by Nobel Laureate John M. Coetzee.
Under scholarship, Kevin studied theatre in London, Ontario, Stratford, Ontario, London, England, and Stratford-upon-Avon. Before leaving university without a degree, Kevin exhibited multidisciplinary art-installations con/tig/u/us and six feet | between us; published poetry, criticism, and dialogue with student outlets; and directed and produced short films including Sea Song, Torso 3, and Magpie.
Supported in part by the London Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts, Kevin founded an independent film company, Astoria Pictures; completed business programs funded by the Libro Credit Union and the Ontario government; and left Canada for immersive residencies in Serbia, Finland, France, Denmark, Brazil, Greece, the UK, Georgia, and Japan, co-releasing while abroad a thirteen-piece short-film anthology, mo(u)vements; collaborative multidisciplinary art-exhibitions in medias res and of and; collaborative chapbooks the rules of grammar will not save you at the hour of your death and Human Voices Wake Us; and sundry publications with Amphora, Centred Magazine, The Devil's Artisan, The Ex-Puritan, Horseshoe Literary Journal, the League of Canadian Poets, Modern Haiku Press, The Miramichi Reader, Parrot Art, Priapress, The Seaboard Review, and the Wortley Villager.
In 2025, Heslop made his home in São Paulo while in residence with Teat(r)o Oficina, returning to Canada to attend TIFF and tour The Writing on the Wind's Wall: Dialogues about 'Medical Assistance in Dying'. He is currently developing new works for the page, stage, and screen, including a feature, a limited series, and two volumes of Craft, Consciousness: Dialogues about the Arts (Guernica Editions, 2027 & 28).