Verses Festival hits town
Slam poetry competition, workshops highlights of literature event
The Verses Festival of Words will be hitting Vancouver April 21 to May 1, bringing a national poetry slam competition, master class workshops and many more events to the Commercial Drive neighbourhood.
Verses is now in its sixth season and will include more than 35 events, including a free youth component at the Vancouver Public library called Hullaballoo. Poets and writers including Ivan Coyote, Richard Wagamese, Wayde Compton, Amber Dawn, Janet Rogers and others will be entertaining and educating during the festival.
“We’re thrilled to present a program which celebrates artists, ideas and words — be they from a multi-award-winning Canadian icon or an up-and-coming youth poet with big dreams,” said Jillian Christmas, artistic director of Verses Festival of Words. “It’s truly inspiring to have such talents performing and collaborating here in Vancouver.”
At Hullaballoo, events are all free and 16 school teams from throughout the province will compete and take part in events and workshops. The other events range in price from free for the Talk the Talk series to about $60 for master classes in subjects ranging from storytelling, to clowning, to slam poetry. The Talk the Talk series is an opportunity for people to gather and participate in a facilitated conversation about big issues like race or sexual politics or community building. The master classes are taught by experts including Coyote, Wagamese and others.
The Verses festival began with a focus on poetry, but it now includes many different literary genres. Christmas says it’s impossible to predict what to expect at any given event.
“You can’t really know what to expect. There’s a whole variety,” Christmas said. “We really like to mix things up. There’s often a mingling between artists who have never worked together before and some who will work together in different way. One thing you can definitely expect is to see some familiar artists in new and interesting ways and to see some things that you’ve never seen before.”
The Canadian Individual Poetry Slam finals will be held Saturday, April 30, at the Rio Theatre and Christmas says it almost always sells out.
“It’s super stimulating and full of variety because these poets come from all across the country,” Christmas said.
The champion gets a cash prize and the opportunity to go to Paris to participate in the world championships.
Christmas said one thing people may not know is that the poets cannot repeat the same poem in the different levels of the competition, so the preliminary rounds also have very strong performances.
“Some of the poets will be performing some of their best poetry during the prelims, so that they can get to finals,” Christmas said. “If you want to see some of the juiciest stuff — really hard hitting and full of heart poems throughout the festival, you really want to get to the prelim events on April 28 and 29.”
Christmas also mentioned a special performance including Coyote, Dawn and Kai Cheng Thom called There Be Monsters on April 24 at the York Theatre. The event includes music by composer and trombonist Ellen Marple, cellist Peggy Lee and other musicians.
For more information, visit versesfestival.ca. Tickets to each event are available at brownpapertickets.com, starting at $8. Tickets for events hosted at The Cultch or York Theatre will be available at thecultch.com.