Latest News and Updates
Poetry Festival Video from Telus
July 24, 2010
Cool! The good folks down at Telus have constructed the following super-cool video that spotlights events from this past year’s Poetry Festival. Pretty awesome, if you ask me!
Hop on the Youtube page and drop a comment there.
Come out for the Festival AGM
July 14, 2010
It’s time again for the Edmonton Poetry Festival’s Annual General Meeting. Here are the specifics:
- When: Sunday, July 25, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
- Where: Edmonton Room, Stanley A. Milner Library
- What’s On: The traditional AGM housekeeping, including election of directors; plus a friendly blue-sky session about the festival’s future.
The Edmonton Poetry Festival is in a good position:
- We recently welcomed Al Rasko as our Financial Development Officer. Al’s two-year part-time contract is generously funded through the Edmonton Arts Council’s festival development program. Our objective is to put the poetry festival on a sustainable footing for the long term, and Al is already working on opportunities (and the administrative systems to support them).
- We have an excellent slate of candidates for the Board of Directors. If you are interested in getting involved with the Board, please contact festival president Alice Major at alice.major@shaw.ca
- Dates for the 2011 festival will be April 25 to May 1, 2011. The AGM’s blue-sky session is an opportunity to talk about the shape and theme of next year’s celebration of poetry in Edmonton.
All members are welcome. Non-members who would like to sign up are also welcome. Annual dues are $10.
The InArms Project
June 29, 2010
The Edmonton Poetry Festival is pleased to present InArms, a project designed to bring together Edmonton’s poetry community and the soldiers and families stationed at CFB Namao in Edmonton.
The project aims to publish poetry by Canadian Forces personnel and their families in an effort to record the war experience in Canada. The website features poetry by soldiers, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, brothers, and comrades. One poem per week is published and a live performance is scheduled for Remembrance Day 2010. A chapbook will be published at that time as well.
The InArms project team consists of Canada’s War Poet Suzanne Steele [website]; Edmonton’s former Poet Laureate Alice Major [website]; and Raving Poets Founding Father Michael Gravel [website]. The team are set to work with participants in various ways – online mentoring, in-person workshops, and friendly editing sessions. One doesn’t have to be a master poet to participate in the InArms project. All that is required is a desire to share words.
Cafe Readings Video
April 28, 2010
Ah yes, the cafe readings. The Festival’s gentle wrap-up on Sunday afternoon. Not content with a mere photo gallery, our esteemed photographer / videographer Randall Edwards has put together a little vid that showcases that cafe readings. here it is:
Discuss. And we’ll see you next year!
Festival Saturday
April 24, 2010
Well, it’s a BIG DAY for the Edmonton Poetry Festival. You should definitely check the sked for today’s list of events. Come on, it’s a blustery day, why not slide down and catch some verse?
Couple items of interest:
- The Edmonton Poetry Festival is now live on Flickr (check it out here). So if you’ve missed the photos from this year’s dew, you can go there for a photographic recap of the festivities.
- You can download a hard copy of the schedule here. That’ll come in handy, especially for tomorrow’s cafe readings wherein 80 poets invade local cafes and deliver their words.
Today’s Events
Here’s a rundown of what you can take in today at the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
- Found in Translation: A Sharing happens at 1:00pm at the Milner Library downtown, main floor. Should be an interesting event very much in keeping with the theme of this year’s festival: Found in Translation.
- Try Your Tongue at Translation happens at the Milner Library as well, at 2:30pm. Poets are invited to bring a poem for potential translation.
- The Poetry Sweatshop goes down at the Artery at 3:00pm. An Edmonton tradition, the sweatshop is a boozy, fists-up brawl of an event designed for the strong of constitution. Admission is free and participants will be expected to drink alcohol and write on command to prompts given by the Sweatshop Captain and his crew. Foul language, heckling, and some good old-fashioned bacchanalia are standard issue, so be sure to check the event listing and decide if this event is for you.
- Findings: The Poetry Party happens at the Artery, 8pm tonight. This is the big kick-out-the-jams party. The legendary Don McKay will be in the house, along with Valerie Mason-John, Kimmy Beach, and the one and only Ian Ferrier. Rumour has it that the slam winner (Titilope Sonuga) will be present as well! It is a fitting summation of a diverse festival.
So, we’ll see you out on the street! 3-2-1-BREATHE.
Hip Hop Heart Beat Pics
April 24, 2010
The night was smokin’ and the rhymes were coming fast. The artery was the place for hip hop last night as some of Edmonton’s finest rhymesmiths kicked it out. Check this out:
Poetry Festival 2010
The Edmonton Poetry Festival: Found in Translation runs from April 19 to 25, 2010.
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