Arts collective reaching out to youth poets in Swift Current for summer festival
The organizers of an upcoming prairie-wide youth poetry festival have been spreading the word and reaching out to young spoken word artists in several communities around Saskatchewan.
Swift Current was one of four communities where the Saskatoon-based Write Out Loud youth arts collective hosted a youth poetry open mic in the run-up to this summer’s Skribe Youth Poetics Festival.
The youth poetry open mic at the Swift Current Branch Library on April 23 was hosted by professional poet and hip-hop artist Dash Reimer, who also performed during the event. A number of youth and adult members in the audience accepted his invitation during the event to share their written pieces with the group.
Reimer said afterwards it is important for the youth arts collective to host these youth poetry open mic events in the four locations outside Saskatoon and Regina prior to the festival.
Three of the events took place during April in Moose
Jaw, Prince Albert and Swift
Current, and the final one in
North Battleford was scheduled for early May.
“We wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just poets from
Saskatoon and Regina,” he said. “Last year I was the poetry editor for Windscript, which is the provincial high school magazine for poetry and prose, and I was blown away by how many incredible writers there were that we probably never get to see. And so that’s part of the hope with the festival, but then also too with coming out to a place like Swift Current.”
The Skribe Youth Poetics Festival will take place in Saskatoon from July 5-8. It is aimed at youth poets aged 13-25 from Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. There will be some travel and lodging bursaries available to assist youth interested in attending the festival.
He noted that the Write Out Loud poetry events in Saskatoon always include a mix of participants who
have read before and others doing it for the first time. The festival will therefore welcome poets for whom public reading and sharing of their works will be a new experience.
“For this festival competition is in no way prioritized, unlike a competitive poetry slam festival,” he said. “People might compare themselves a little bit, but what’s prioritized in it is community building through open mics, sharing with each other and hearing other poets perform, but also workshops.”
He added that it will not be a requirement for attendees to read their work during their time at the festival.
“That’s OK too, if you want to just get better and maybe you don’t want to read, but you want to be there to just learn,” he said. “People can take from it what they want to. So just come and engage with it as much as you feel you’re able to.”
There are currently active spoken word scenes in Regina and Saskatoon that provide opportunities for poets,
but elsewhere in the province there are not as many occasions for writers to perform.
Reimer’s interest in poetry started during his high school years, when spoken word poets visited his school. He was impressed with the authority and presence of their performances and the audience response to their words.
“That’s the performance of it, not just the writing of it,” he said. “It’s rooted in community, it’s making sure that your voice is heard, it’s being witnessed, but it’s also listening well. In spoken word, it’s not just the performer who should be prioritized. The audience should also be prioritized and the listeners are just as much a part of the story and the space.”
For information about the Skribe Youth Poetics Festival, watch for updates on the Write Out Loud youth arts collective Instagram account @writeoutloudpoetry or send an e-mail to writeoutloudcollective@gmail.com