Events Schedule

This eleventh annual evening of well-aged poets features local poets and special guest reader Bert Almon. Bert is the author of eleven books and taught creative writing at the U of A for 40 years. The evening includes wine and cheese (cash bar available). To be a reader please sign up by calling 780-468-1985 before the event as there are limited spaces available.

Presented in partnership with SEESA.

Venue

SEESA Centre

9350 82 Street
Edmonton, AB T6C 2X8 Canada

En cette 6e édition, le French Twist est aujourd’hui un événement francophone incontournable de l’Edmonton Poetry Festival. Animée par Pierrette Requier, Poète officielle de la ville d’Edmonton et présentée par Radio-Canada, cette soirée vous promet un voyage mémorable avec des artistes provenant de tous horizons, avec des sonorités et des mots bien à eux, bien de chez-eux!

Nous aurons le bonheur d’entendre : Bernard Salva, Dan Dennis alias 2Moods et son amie Precious Riwo, Danièle Petit, Medgine Mathurin, Patrick Dunn, Shima Robinson, Zaira Makhacheva ainsi que notre invitée d’honneur, la prolifique Gisèle Villeneuve. Soyez des nôtres; une invitée surprise fera une apparition remarquée…

Hosted bilingually by Edmonton’s poet laureate Pierrette Requier, this year’s 6th edition of French Twist, the Poetry Festival’s only francophone event for the greater Anglophone public, will feature diverse works. Join us for a dynamic evening of poetry live at the Kasbar with poets Dan Dennis & Precious Riwo, Patrick Dunn, Medgine Mathurin, Bernard Salva, Danièle Petit, and Shima Robinson.

Presented in partnership with RAFA.

Venue

Kasbar Lounge

10444 82 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T6E 2A2 Canada

Please join the staff of the University of Alberta Press for readings and refreshments as we launch our newest literary titles:

• Rising Abruptly, Gisèle Villeneuve – Seven enigmatic and compelling stories about the myth and mystery of mountains.
• Little Wildheart, Micheline Maylor – Quirky, startling, earthy poems reflect the moods of existence.
• Nuala, Kimmy Beach – A giant adolescent puppet becomes self-aware in a dystopian world of love and treachery.
• Believing is not the same as Being Saved, Lisa Martin – Lyric poems that tenderly meditate on life and death, joy and sorrow, faith and doubt.
• Listen. If, Douglas Barbour – Love to landscapes, politics to jazz; poems to read aloud for the joy of sound.

Our MC for this year’s Literary Cocktails is Linda Cameron, Director of UAP. Literary Cocktails is a proud part of the 2017 Edmonton Poetry Festival. All are welcome at this free event!

Presented in partnership with the U of A Press.

Venue

University of Alberta Faculty Club

11436 Saskatchewan Drive
Edmonton, AB T6G 2G9 Canada

Poetry Central is your chance for a lunch-time poetry meet-up in the downtown! Watch some of Edmonton’s emerging and established, page and stage poets, have a short-order poem written for you on the spot, and pick up festival information.

Performers – Thursday April 20

• Tabitha CA is a poet, dancer and community activator who strives to create safe spaces, facilitate artists of many disciplines and promote creative freedom and artistic experimentation in inclusive environments. They are an original member of The Edmonton Poetry Brothel, a 2016 Slam Team Finalist, creator of Word Fight! and use their poetry to create beauty in vulnerability and display strength through art.
• Montreal-born, Edmonton-based poet Kathy Fisher has been performing her words for international audiences for over three decades. Her passion is marrying sonic elements in poetry with improvisational music or ‘found sound’ – be they recordings of northern lights, tracks from her oral history sound library, or arias from rediscovered opera divas. She recently served as mentor in the Writer’s Guild of Alberta Borderlines program and is currently excavating and re-writing her LL.M. thesis as creative non-fiction.

Venue

Edmonton City Hall

1 Sir Winston Churchill Square NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 2R7 Canada

Poetry Central is your chance for a lunch-time poetry meet-up in the downtown! Watch some of Edmonton’s emerging and established, page and stage poets, have a short-order poem written for you on the spot, and pick up festival information.

Performers – Wednesday April 19

• *Medgine Mathurin*: Haitian-born poet, psalmist and spoken word artist Medgine Mathurin is a person for whom the love of language and the alchemy of words is second nature. Her multi-lingual upbringing (french, creole, english) not only prompted her to begin experimenting with the potential and magic of language, but naturally compelled her into a deep love of poetry.
• *Malik Hinton* At eighteen, and after a very successful high school performing arts tenure, Malik is diving head first into the real world of professional theatre, spoken word and all around performing arts! He considers it a true privilege and honour to have the opportunity to share his work at Poetry Central this year.
• *Donovan Waskahat* is Nehiyawak. He is a talented wordsmith who uses various storytelling art forms to share his stories, history, and feelings. His strength, wisdom, and sense of humour are infused in his art. Donovan is heavily involved with iHuman’s music program and Edmonton’s Hip Hop community. He believes in the importance of youth to take action and be a voice in situations when people aren’t speaking up. Donovan was a member of the 2016 Edmonton Slam team that competed in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Venue

Edmonton City Hall

1 Sir Winston Churchill Square NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 2R7 Canada

Hey teen poets! Looking to try your hand at slamming? This individual poetry competition is an opportunity exclusively for young spoken word artists. All competitors and judges will be 21 or under. Just remember it’s all about the poetry, not the points. Get ready to see Edmonton’s youth light up the mic.

Lilian Allen, “a godmother of rap, hip-hop, dub and spoken word”, will perform a set at this event.

Presented by the Breath in Poetry Collective.

Venue

The Nook Cafe

10153 97 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 0L4 Canada

What comes along every 25 years and goes like lightning? It’s the Quicksilver Blinks and the thermometer will be rising at—of course—the Mercury Room. It’s poetry that won’t stand still! It’s a shimmy and shimmer of words!

The Stroll of Poets’ annual blitz of 30-second poems takes on extra polish this year. We’re celebrating the Stroll’s 25th anniversary as Edmonton’s friendliest poetry gathering. So shine up your lines and show us your metal!

All are welcome to deliver a Quicksilver poem. Or just come to hear poems that will roll along faster and brighter than beads of mercury on a mirror.

How to Sign Up for The Quicksilver Blinks

Signup deadline: Friday April 7, 2017

Send an email to blinks@edmontonpoetryfestival.com. Your email must contain the following information:

1. Email subject should be “Blinks signup”
2. Your first AND last name

Note: If your signup email doesn’t contain this info, it may be missed.

Presented in partnership with The Stroll of Poets

Venue

The Mercury Room

10575 114 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5H 3J6 Canada

Hear from emerging poets who are fresh and skilled in their craft, as they share their work and discuss the role poetry plays in crossing that next horizon in their writing. Featured contributors to the magazine include Maya Gupta, Ariel Kroon, Pearl Lorentzen, and Floyd Robert-Maduekwe, along with special guest Bert Almon, who has guided many new talents during his time as a Creative Writing instructor at the University of Alberta.

Presented in partnership with Glass Buffalo Magazine.

Venue

Audreys Books

10702 Jasper Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3J5 Canada

Poets were treated like gods in 19th & 20th Century Russia. The story of three such poets – Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam – will be presented by weaving together poems and memories against the background of Russia’s tumultuous, tragic history. Staged by Edmonton poets Ella Zeltzerman and Randy Kohan in collaboration with the Edmonton Russian Poetry Club. Also featuring Pierrette Requier, Edmonton’s current Poet Laureate, and Gary Garrison. This event is presented in two parts of 45 minutes each, separated by a 30 minute intermission. Russian tea, coffee and cookies will be served.

Space generously donated by TACOS.

Performers

• Ella Zeltserman is an Edmonton poet. Her first book of poetry, small things left behind, was published by University of Alberta Press and won the Robert Kroetsch prize for best book of poetry from ABPA and Betty Averbach Foundation poetry prize. Her newest collection, The Air Is Elastic, will be published by Turnstone Press in spring 2018.
• Randy Kohan has had two collections of poetry published by Ekstasis Editions – Hammers & Bells (2013) and Rain of Naughts (2015). Hammers & Bells has recently been translated into Russian; plans are in place for publication of a dual-language edition in Russia with book launches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Dagestan by late 2017.
• Pierrette Requier, Edmonton’s 6th Poet Laureate, child of la grande prairie canadienne, is a bilingual poet, playwright, performer, producer, mentor and arts activist. Although her work constantly brings her to new places, her pieces come from some deep core of home in her, a rising up of words, of a rhythm, through the ears, like a heartbeat; a surging, like the August wind in the leaves.
• Gary Garrison is an Okie from Muskogee who let his hair grow long, came to Canada, and raised three children instead of killing people in Vietnam. He has been the Editor of Alberta Hansard, coordinator of volunteer prison visitors at “the Max”, and an active member of Edmonton’s writing community.

Venue

Theatre Dialog

10005 80 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T6E 1T4 Canada

The Polyglot (www.thepolyglotmagazine.com) is a new Canadian biannual magazine devoted to publishing multilingual poetry and art. Our inaugural issue themed Crosswalks (Spring 2017) expands the horizons of what languages, poetry, and art can do.

At our event The Polyglot: Multilingual Horizons, eight of the poets featured in our first issue will read their poems and discuss the intersections between poetry and languages.

After the readings, the poets will discuss how different languages have expanded their poetic horizons. Some guiding questions will be: Why write in languages other than English? How have you experimented with languages in your poetry? How does your writing process differ in each language? What advice would you give to others who would like to try their hand at writing in a second or foreign language?

Performers

• Luciana Erregue (Spanish | English) is a Canadian-Argentinian MA in Art History from the University of Alberta whose research and writing interests correspond to her experiences of growing up amidst the political upheaval of 1970’s Argentina and her immigration to Canada.
• Anton Iorga (English | French | Spanish) is an activist/polymath poet/anticolonial scholar/translator currently trying to help fix the world one poem at a time.
• Émilie Lavoie (French) is a Canadian francophone of mixed heritage and influences (a mesclun of North Africa, Ontario, Québec and Europe) whose first poetry book was published in 2016, by Les Écrits 9, in France.
• Yukari Meldrum (Japanese | English) is a Certified Translator (Canada) and a poet who enjoys the space occupying both Japanese and English.
• Naomi McIlwraith (Cree | English) A peacemaker by nature, Naomi believes that in her next life she will be a Tamarack tree or a small mountain lake.
• Adriana Onita (Romanian | Italian | Spanish | French | English) is the founder of The Polyglot. She is a poet, artist, and owner of For the Love of Language, a language education business.
• Axel Pérez Trujillo Diniz (Spanish | English | Portuguese) is a sojourner poet, always looking up to the stars whilst writing in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
• Pierrette Requier (French | English), Edmonton’s 6th Poet Laureate, child of la grande prairie canadienne, is a bilingual poet, playwright, performer, producer and mentor.

Venue

McLuhan House

11342 64 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5W 4H5 Canada

As founder of the University of Alberta, Alexander Cameron Rutherford evinced a great appreciation of literature, including poetry. In fact, Eric Broadus, the University of Alberta’s first English Professor (in 1908), dedicated his 1923 Anthology of Canadian Prose and Verse to him:

To Alexander Cameron Rutherford, who played an honourable part in the upbuilding of the West, this book is affectionately dedicated.

The poets gathered for this event explore the idea of “History” – they each apply their voice to personal histories, cultural histories, Edmonton/ Strathcona’s history, or the larger history of our land and the earth. The poetry readings will begin at 2:00pm, with each poet reading a small selection of poems, and will take place in Mr. Rutherford’s Library and the Dining Room. Guests will have the opportunity to wander through the house, and will engage with poetry in many areas of the house. Encounter WWI poetry in Cecil Rutherford’s room (he was at the Front), or discover romantic poetry in the master bedroom. Create your own poems in our magnetic poetry area, or collaborate on a group poem inspired by the site.

Note: Rutherford House is open from 12:00 noon – 4:30pm. Poetry readings begin at 2:00pm.

Performers

• Tracey Anderson lives life in red ink and blue ink as a writer, editor and poet. She’s been writing and exploring poetry for over thirty years, but only recently started sharing her work with others. Her favourite poetic form is haiku, which she loves for its complex simplicity and its connection to the natural world. To return to regular poetic practice, Tracey wrote over 300 new haiku in 2016, focusing on the small things she noticed by taking a few moments at a time to pay close attention to the world. In a previous life, Tracey was an English teacher overseas for fifteen years. She loves to travel the world in books and on airplanes.
• Jennifer Bowering Delisle is the author of The Bosun Chair (NeWest Press 2017), a hybrid of poetry and family memoir. She has published poetry, fiction and nonfiction in magazines and anthologies across North America. She has a PhD in Canadian Literature from UBC, and is also the author of The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-Migration. She lives in Edmonton.
• Gail Sidonie Sobat is a poet, novelist and singer. She is the creator of YouthWrite®, a camp for kids who love to write…just about anything!©, and an instructor in the communications programs at MacEwan University and in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, where she completed a Master’s degree in English in Children’s Literature, specializing in fantasy. An experienced workshop facilitator and writer-in-residence, Gail has presented across Canada, including Canada’s North; Doha, Qatar; Hanoi, Vietnam; Bern, Switzerland; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; and most recently at the Northeastern Modern Language Association in Baltimore, Maryland. Gail has been writer-in-residence in several Canadian schools, at Queens’ University, in Doha, Qatar, at the University of Alberta through the Canadian Authors Association, for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Public Libraries, and this past February, for NorthWords in Yellowknife, NWT.

Venue

Rutherford House Provincial Historic Site

11153 Saskatchewan Drive NW
Edmonton, AB T6G 2S1 Canada

NOTE NEW EVENT TIME: Event start time is now 1:00pm.

A Poetry reading with Jade O’Riley & The Poets Within. Jade O’Riley, creator of City Arts Poet Within classes and Edmonton Poets House, presents The Poet Within Reading: We Come To You From Everywhere.

Poets who’ve attended Poet Within classes at City Arts from 2007 – 2017 are invited to read their works from the Poet Within chapbooks series or from the poems they submitted to the class books at the end of each poetry session. At this event, poets will be scheduled to read in 10 minute time slots.

We’ll kick off the event with Luke Tracey Newmann & Poets House Band, and close the day with a BYOP open mic & musical finale. With your day of poetry, enjoy a variety of teas, coffee, cold drinks and snacks.

Venue

Edmonton Poets House

9016 153 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5R 1P4 Canada