Currently in development, rumi roaming is an independent multi-poetic, multi-media and multi-lingual project by curator and lead artist Gita Hashemi, produced by SubversivePress. Inspired by a decolonial reading of Rumi’s work, the project aims to generate new place-based responses to contemporary issues that use Rumi’s poetics as a jumping off point. rumi roaming unfolds in multiple movements on the streets of T'karonto during Fall 2021 and Spring 2022, followed by a presentation at Toronto’s 2022 Nuit Blanche. Combining embodied writing with poetry, movement, storytelling, the project acknowledges T'karonto/Toronto as the long historical meeting place of peoples and cultures. A companion volume with the same title will be released in Spring 2023 in collaboration with Quattro Books. Initial funding for the project is provided by the Toronto Arts Council.

Iranian-born Gita Hashemi is an award-winning artist, curator and writer, a refugee, a displanted settler who works from T’karonto, the “Dish With One Spoon Territory,” the homelands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat nations, most recently the territory of the Mississaugas of Credit. She lives near Wonscotonach (burning bright point) river, on unceded land that is subject to the 2015 Rouge River Tract Claim by the Mississauga First Nation. Her home in Shiraz was near Khoshk (dry) river.