| In 1999, The League of Canadian Poets established April as National Poetry Month. Among others, one goal is to bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways.
After attending Poetry Africa in 2001, Sheri-D Wilson returned to Calgary with the idea that she needed to do just that. "You say, ‘Action! Action!’ But what will the action be?" she says. She wanted to bring out the voices in exile, the voices in translation, and one night had a dream that she should start a spoken word festival in Calgary. "The gods came down and gave me that dream."
Wilson’s path has always been the alternative one, educational institutions were mostly bypassed in favour of unconventional learning experiences – attending the Naropa Institute as a non-credit student, living with beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Diane Di Prima and helping out in exchange for learning at their feet.
It’s no surprise that she has played a large role in building a unique and strong spoken word scene in Calgary, a city that is fast becoming a major poetry hub. "Like Chicago in the U.S.," writes New York City poet Bob Holman, who participated in the 2005 festival, "Calgary stakes a claim as the Spoken Word Capital of Canada."
Beginning in 2004, the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival has quickly grown to one of the largest festivals of its kind in Canada, second only to Montreal’s Voix d’Amerique. "The Festival took me, and I go where it takes me," says Wilson.
In that spirit, The Calgary Spoken Word Society has worked to bring poetry to Calgarians in a variety of ways – monthly poetry slams at Beatniq, special readings and performances such as the bill bissett tribute last November, the Word Travels program, bringing poetry into schools across the city and Spoken Word Summit meetings that draw together poets from across North America to collaborate and create discourse.
The next step has 20 spoken word artists from across the country invited to the Banff Centre in April to participate in Spoken Word Pilot Program, a collaborative creative writing, reading, recording and performance workshop. The program will be one of the first of its kind and is, says Wilson, "the reason I wanted to start the festival."
The program and the festival intersect in many ways. Five of the participating poets, Fortner Anderson, Klyde Broox, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Jill Battson and Ian Ferrier, will partake in Poetry sPeaks, a spoken word festival event showcasing extreme performance sport-poetry.
Taking place from April 5 to the 22, other festival events include old favourites like Big Bang Poetry & Music with Kris Demeanor and his Crack Band, and newer events like the francophone Bilingual Tongues that hints at the new direction the festival will be taking in the future. They celebrate different types of spoken word. "Each event has its own individual greatness," says Wilson.
The festival opens with OUTrageously Real, co-presented with OutFest and Calgary Outlink and will feature John Barton, David Bateman, Ivan E. Coyote, Billeh Nickerson, evalyn parry, Bill Richardson and Michael V. Smith, as well as local drag queen Mz. Dyna Myte. After last year’s Queer Conscience became one of the festival’s most popular events, Wilson was overjoyed that the festival continues to give voice to a much unacknowledged and marginalized group.
Calgary publisher Frontenac House launches its annual Quartet series at a free event at the Memorial Park library. This year’s quartet, featuring Toronto’s David Bateman and Patria Rivera, and Grande Prairie’s Dymphny Dronik and Alexis Kienlen – will give readings from their new books.
Home of Earth features Calgary artists who have moved to other cities, including Murdoch Burnett, who will be awarded the first Golden Beret Award for contributions to "Calgary’s cultural landscape."
The festival closes with Story Circle/Woman Song, celebrating the stories of women and featuring Shannon Maguire, Wendy Morton, Orunamamu, Ali Riley, d’bi young and Calgary’s own Möe Clark, who recently won the CBC Calgary Poetry Face-Off,
For more information on the festival, visit www.calgaryspokenwordfestival.com. |
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