Hard to miss the buzz about VERSeFest lately. Check out their website: I'm definitely booking off some time next week to get out and see what I can! This weekend is packed with pre-Fest events, and then the official kickoff happens at Arts Court on the 8th with Ian Keteku, David McGimpsey, Brad Morden and Craig Poile. . . and it all just goes from there.
I also have to join the rest of town to say congratulations to Pearl Pirie for the Robert Kroetsch Award win!
Ottawa, Ottawa, it's a poetry sort of town. Even if the people at Metro were a little unplugged (and it was funny to watch the indignation fly. Hey, Metro is a massive cheesenews conglomerate. Not that surprising they don't know what's going on in poetry (and that they called VERSeFest the city's "first ever poetry festival.") Really, if you're not involved with the poets, you don't know what's going on in local poetry. . . It IS kind of a niche market.
Bwah?
ReplyDeleteSorry. I know it's a niche market. I know terms like "live lit" and "spoken word" aren't exactly in common parlance and that they do make ones relatives kind of give you blank looks when you tell them what you're doing for a living but... Good grief.
Even if you aren't, personally, familiary with the poetry/wordart/lit scene in town, there is such a thing a google.
Seriously. I put "Ottawa Poetry" into google and I got Tree, Capslam, VERSeFest, plus the Bywords calendar (twice), Rob McLennan's blog, the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter, and hits for Dusty Owl and Ottawater. On the first page alone.
One click. :-P
It's not hard to figure out that poetry is big in this city.
People wouldn't necessarily think to type 'Ottawa Poetry' into their search engines! But I think there are more and more of those who do nowadays...
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