Literary snapshot: What’s happening in February

Photo credit: Ben Oh (via Flickr)

Kathryn Hunt is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

It’s probably a good thing there’s an extra day in February this year, it’s so packed with literary events.

I’ll actually start at the end with the biggest literary event for the month: VERSeFest 2012. This new festival dedicated to bringing ‘page’ and ‘stage’ poetry together starts on Feb. 28 and goes till March 4 Last year’s Festival was a rousing start for this new venture and this year they’re going much bigger, with international stars, workshops and a full six days of events. Headliners include The Summit Reading, with top poets from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico (Phil Hall, Philip Levine, and Pura López-Colomé), American spoken word and hip hop star Ursula Rucker, Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout, and beloved blues poet C.R. Avery.

There are also a lot of workshops going on this month: In/Words, the Carleton-based literary journal and writers’ group, is holding a series of workshops in 1811 Dunton Tower on campus, all starting at 6:00: on Feb. 6 it’s “Humour in Poetry” with Bardia Sinaee; on Feb. 9 it’s “Editing and Publishing Fiction” with Dave Currie; and on Feb. 13 it’s “The Spoken Word” with Brandon Wint.

The Tree Seeds workshops, held before the Tree Reading Series, are also a great free resource for stretching your poetry skills: their next one focuses on reshaping a rough poem. It’s on the 14th, with Glenn Kletke, at the Arts Court at 6:45.

VERSeFest will also feature a couple of free workshops on Saturday, March 3, at Arts Court: At 1:00 local poet and teacher Danielle Gregoire will be hosting an all-ages writing workshop (Danielle is great at working with different age groups), and at 3:00 there’s a slam workshop with former World Slam Champion Ian Keteku.

They’re also presenting a workshop with the legendary spoken word and hip hop star Ursula Rucker, from Philadelphia. She’s in town for VERSeFest and running a workshop at the Mercury Lounge on Sunday, March 4. The workshop is $50 and includes a ticket to her Saturday show. Signup is first-come, first-served: email versefest@live.ca anytime after 10:00 am on Feb. 1. The first 20 people to email will reserve space, and have seven days to get payment to VERSeFest to confirm. A waiting list will be maintained as well.

Voices of Venus for February will feature Abby Paige on Wednesday the 8^th at 8:00 pm: Abby is a writer, actor and editor who’s just moved to Ottawa. Voices of Venus is always a good time: one of Ottawa’s rowdier, and cheerier, literary audiences. The (ladies only) open mike is fun too. The show’s at Venus Envy at 320 Lisgar.

The Undercurrents theatre festival runs from the 7^th to the 19^th at the Irving Greenberg Centre – a great mix of independent, new, adventurous productions from across the country and local shows. Undercurrents was a huge hit with its inaugural festival last year, and this year’s edition’s been hotly anticipated.

Capital Slam on Feb. 11 (this is at a different time from usual because of VERSeFest), features local, national, and international champion Ian Keteku as well as the usual slam competition. Also, February’s slam will give priority in the signup to people who haven’t competed yet this season, so show up early to get on the list.

The Tree Reading Series is featuring Leslie Vryenhoek (an editor at Riddle Fence) and Marilyn Bowering (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award) on the 14^th – yes, that’s Valentine’s Day, but think about the long and storied history of poetry and romance!

For any Lord of the Rings fans, or fans of Wagner, there’s the Ottawa Storytellers show at the Fourth Stage on the 16^th: “Dragon’s Gold: A Sword Reforged, A Ring Accursed.” Three storytellers – Jennifer Cayley, Jan Andrews, and Katherine Grier – all of whom are great at telling Norse legends, will be telling stories from the original Quest of the Ring. The show’s at 7:30: tickets are $20.

Also on the 16^th, the A B Series presents GEODE, a music and poetry group including poet Susan McMaster and a group of musicians on bass, winds steel guitar, keyboards and percussion. Their work blends poetry, jazz, blue, new music, world music and classical. They’ll be performing at Gallery 101 at 8:00. Tickets are $9.

The next night, the 17^th, the Factory Reading Series is hosting Deanna Young, Mike Blouin and Robin Macdonald, over at the Carleton Tavern (upstairs). Two of the writers – Deanna Young and Mike Blouin – are launching new chapbooks, and Robin Macdonald has poetry in the latest issue of the online journal Ottawater.

On Sunday the 19^th, Dusty Owl is hosting their annual fundraiser for Ottawa’s delegates to the Black Youth Congress; they partner with 3 Dreads and a Bald Head, a group that works to provide opportunities to black youth in Ottawa, on this fundraiser each year. It’s at the Elmdale House Tavern on Wellington, at 3:00 pm, and will feature poets Joanne John, Jacqueline Lawrence, and John Akpata.

Friday the 24^th is Once Upon a Slam, one of the only storytelling slams in the country. It’s just like a poetry slam, except you get five minutes to tell a story. Audience judges rate the stories – it’s all in fun – and there’s a featured performer. I’ve become a regular at OUAS: the stories are always varied and fun, and whenever I can, I sign up for the slam. It’s at the Mercury Lounge: doors at 6:45, slam at 7:15.

And then we’re all off to VERSeFest!

Lots of opportunity to take in some great events, Ottawa. Which are YOU going to attend?

Literary snapshot: What’s happening in January

Photo credit: Ben Oh (via Flickr)

Kathryn Hunt is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs,performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

It’s a new year for Ottawa’s literary scene, and man, is January busy!

If you resolved to explore your creative side this New Year and you’re looking for people to help you do it, you can check out some of the writing groups that meet regularly around town. Carleton University’s In/Words magazine and small press meets every Monday and Thursday at 6:00 PM on the 18^th floor of Dunton Tower (the tall tower in the middle of campus) for group criticism and workshopping: bring 6-8 copies of your latest work to share.

If you need a kickstart out of writers’ block, you can meet up with the Creative Writing Play Date, which meets at Mother Tongue Books at Bank and Sunnyside at 8:00 every Tuesday. Hosted by local writer Sean Zio, the Play Date is a drop-in workshop: participants are given a writing exercise at the beginning of the evening and write in the first half, then return and read their new work to each other in the second. It’s intended as an encouraging space to try new things and dedicate time to writing.

And then, of course, there are always a ton of literary happenings to get out to this month:

Jan. 7 sees the first Capital Slam of the season, at the Mercury Lounge. The competition has been getting really interesting, with a lot of new poets coming up through the ranks, including a hefty crop of women slammers (a welcome sight.) Their feature for this event is also well worth getting out to see: Brendan McLeod has been performing as a poet, musician, slam champion, novelist – and now storyteller – for years, touring across England and North America. I’ve never yet seen a Brendan McLeod show that didn’t make my whole week better. Doors and slam signup are at 6:30 at the Mercury Lounge.

A scene from a previous Capital Slam (Photo credit: Pesbo via Flickr)

The women’s performance series, Voices of Venus, will be featuring Kay’la (Kiki) Fraser on Jan. 11. Kiki has been a member of the Toronto Poetry Slam Team and the Burlington Slam Project Team and has featured at a number of shows across Canada – sharing the stage with artists like Shauntay Grant, Tasha Jones, Dwayne Morgan,

Brendan McLeod and C.R. Avery. The show is at Venus Envy, 230 Lisgar. It’s $5 or pay-what-you-can; the doors open at 7:30, open mike is at 8:00, followed by the feature.

Jan. 12 sees a reading by Henry Beissel at the A B Series called “From Icarus to Idi Amin.” The reading’s at 7:30 (doors at 7:00) at Laurier House, and the admission’s free, although if you want tea and scones, bring some cash and show up while supplies last.

On Jan. 13, the School of the Photographic Arts is hosting the fourth installment of a collaborative project curated by rob mclennan called “Call and Response,” in which a photographer’s work is responded to by a poet. The poet for this installment is the marvelous Sandra Ridley, responding to the exhibition Study of Structure and Form by Pedro Isztin. There’s always something to be learned when one artist uses their art form to interpret another’s. The opening, reading, and vernissage is on the 13^th at 6:00; the photographs will remain on display until Feb. 6.

The Dusty Owl’s Jan. 15 feature is Brandon Wint: a two-time member of the Canadian National Champion Slam Team, member of the popular spoken word group The Recipe, and an unabashed love poet, Brandon recently released a gorgeous short video, ‘Poetry in Motion,’ which was one of the top videos in the Ottawa International Film Festival’s music video challenge. Dusty Owl is at 3:00 at the Elmdale House Tavern: the show’s free but they pass a hat.

Brandon Wint performs at a previous VERSefest (Photo credit: Pesbo via Flickr)

For a little live storytelling, and if you like true-life stories or war history, check out the Ottawa Storytellers’ ‘A House Divided: Stories of the American Civil War’ on Jan. 19 at featuring storytellers Gail Anglin, Tom Lips and Daniel Kletke, who will tell stories of people on both sides of the war, framed by the songs that would have moved and encouraged the soldiers and their families at home. It’s part of the Ottawa Storytellers’ “Speaking Out, Speaking In” series at the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage.

The A B Series is bringing the Montreal spoken word artist Cat Kidd back to Ottawa, along with fellow Montrealer and “word-sound systemizer” Kaie Kellough, on Jan. 20 at Gallery 101. Cat Kidd is a hard-to-define performer, combining performance poetry with a stage-covering, dancelike theatricality in which she can sometimes embody multiple personas at the same time. Kaie Kellough blurs the lines between words and rhythms with his brand of bop-inflected poetry. The show is at 8:00 PM, and tickets are $9.

On the next day, the 21^st, you can celebrate the end of the world (because that’s supposed to happen in 2012, right?) with VERSe Ottawa. They’re having a party at Arts Court, with live music from Call me Katie and Puggy Hammer, open mikes, poetry readings, and the announcement of the winner of their Poetry For The End of the World contest. The winning poem will then be attached to an actual weather balloon – at the party – and sent to “The End Of the World.” How cool is that? (The contest details are on their website, at versefest.ca.) The show is a fundraiser for VERSeFest: it kicks off at 7:00 and goes all night with alternating readings, music, and open mikes, and space to socialize in the studio.

And just before the month runs out, you can also get out on the 27^th, for the launch party of the eighth issue of the poetry PDF journal ottawater. A bunch of contributors to the journal will be there to read their work; the party kicks off at 7:00 at the Carleton Tavern, upstairs, with readings at 7:30.

Last but certainly not least, the next day you can witness the city’s first Women’s Slam Championship on Jan. 28 at 7:00. An invitational slam, this event will put twelve women from the history of Ottawa’s slam scene on stage at Arts Court to compete for the title, from the latest group of new poets (one of them only 14 years old and already a national youth champion) to one of the co-founders of Capital Slam, and everything in between. Ottawa’s women slammers have been taking their place at the forefront lately: this is a chance to see the best of the best. The event is also a VERSeFest fundraiser: the top four poets will be invited to perform at the festival, running Feb 28-March 4. 

Sounds like a fun month — if you can brave the cold! Thanks, Kathryn!

Literary Snapshot: What’s happening in December

Photo credit: Ben Oh (via Flickr)

Kathryn Hunt is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

As the temperature drops, it seems the literary scene only gets hotter: between now and the end of the year there are a whole lot of chances to get your literary events in!

Suzanne Steele at the Tree Reading Series last year (Photo credit: Pesbo, via Flickr)

On December 13^th, the venerable Tree Reading Series is holding an all-open-mic session at the Arts Court Library, along with a talk on contemporary poetics by Shane Rhodes, one of Ottawa’s edgiest poets. Tree’s known for offering more than a simple reading, being one of the only series in town that offers talks and conversations on poetry as well as workshops. This evening will start at 6:45 with a free workshop with Governor General’s Award winner Phil Hall, then Shane’s talk at 8:00, and then an open mike – with prizes!

On December 14^th, Voices of Venus is presenting local author and storyteller Marie Bilodeau. An award-winning fantasy author, with four novels under her belt and a fifth about to be released, Marie is known – maybe notorious – for her strong female characters, her humour, and her appetite for epic destruction. Marie is also an entertaining storyteller – sometimes hilarious, sometimes lyrical. The show starts at 7:30 at Venus Envy with an all-women open mike: $5/PWYC and open mike performers get in free.

PrufRock performs at the Capital Slam showcase earlier this year (Photo credit: Pesbo, via Flickr)

If you like the fire of slam, Capital Slam is rounding out the year with a fantastic feature at the Mercury Lounge on Saturday, December 17: they’re featuring “Ottawa Fountain,” the National Youth Slam Champions. This team blew the competition away at the Nationals this year with their powerful team pieces and stage presence. The youngest of the team is only 13, but anyone who’s seen them agrees they could all hold their own on the mainstage alongside much older performers. The doors and slam signup are at 6:30: cover is $8, and free for performers.

On the 22^nd, The Peter F. Yacht Club, a writer’s group/community/journal which has had a powerful influence over the poetry community in Ottawa, is holding a “regatta/reading/Christmas party” in the upstairs room at the Carleton Tavern (223 Armstrong) from 7:00 pm – there will be readings by Yacht Club Irregulars like Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, Vivian Vavassis, Monty Reid, rob mclennan and others. Hosted by rob mclennan, the Carleton Tavern readings are always warm, smart, and fun.

In/Words is looking for submissions for its Winter edition (Photo credit: Pesbo, via Flickr)

Meanwhile, end-of-year deadlines creep up: might as well end the year by sending out your own writing!The Tree Press Chapbook Competition’s deadline for submissions is December 30. It costs $10 to enter and you can submit a chapbook of up to 32 pages; the winner gets an ISBN for their book. Submissions can be sent by mail to Tree Press Chapbook Contest, c/o Claudia Coutu Radmore, Managing Editor, 49 McArthur Ave., Carleton Place, ON K7C 2W1.

In/Words, Carleton’s literary journal, is also looking for submissions of poetry and fiction for their winter issue. The deadline to submit is December 31 – send your work to inwordsmagazine@gmail.com. The Winter issue will be officially launched at VERSeFest 2012 (Feb 28-Mar 4.)

Lots to take advantage of, Tourists! If you have a favourite scene that you like to explore in Ottawa, drop us a note at ltottawa@gmail.com.

A bounty of books: Piles of cool, local writing await at the Small Press Fair

The crowds at the spring edition of Ottawa's Small Press Fair (Photo credit: Pesbo via Flickr

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

For a lot of people, there’s something deeply satisfying about browsing through tables loaded with stuff you just can’t find anywhere else.  There’s just something cool about it: you think of flipping through vinyl at a record store looking for that rare find, or being part of the ‘in crowd’ before the rest of the world catches on to the next big thing.

And then there are people who love small presses because, face it, almost every writer starts in a small magazine, or with a chapbook, or even by publishing themselves. (For example, H.P. Lovecraft, the famed horror writer and author of The Call of Cthulhu, was a prolific self-publisher of small press chapbooks, newspapers and journals, under a multitude of pen names.) All those different forms of the small-to-micro-press lover will be in attendance at the fall edition of the Ottawa Small Press Fair on November 5.

Started in 1994 by Ottawa poet rob mclennan and his colleague James Spyker, the Small Press Fair has evolved and grown over the last 17 years. Spyker is no longer involved with the fair, but it has been faithfully nurtured by mclennan and has steadily grown in popularity. As a university poet many (many) moons ago, I remember bringing the hand-photocopied and stapled books I’d produced for the Carleton English Literature Society to the fair, and later attending with Dusty Owl Press: our biggest publication was the novella Tattoo This Madness In, by Montreal writer Daniel Allen Cox, who went on to garner nominations for the Lambda Award for his novels Krakow Melt and Shuck, and for the ReLit Award for Shuck. Which just goes to show, you never know what future award winner’s work may be on the tables at the small press fair.

Some of the offers from Comix at last year's Small Press Fair (Photo credit: Pesbo via Flickr)

The fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc; vendors at previous events have included Bywords, Dusty Owl, Chaudiere Books, above/ground press, Room 302 Books, The Puritan, The Ottawa Arts Review, Buschek Books, The Grunge Papers, Broken Jaw Press, BookThug, Proper Tales Press, and others. It’s a great place to pick up brand-new literature at a bargain price, to discover your new favorite local artist, and to meet others in the literary community. Besides, you get to poke through piles of bleeding-edge, cool, local writing!

The small press fair’s fall edition will be held on November 5 at the Jack Purcell Community Centre, room 203, on Jack Purcell Lane (just off Elgin Street), from 11:00 to 5:00 pm. (And if you stick around till 5:00, there’s usually a traditional mass-exodus to the James Street Pub for drinks and bookish conversation afterward.)

Sounds like a perfect sale for a beautiful fall Saturday. Why not make weekend plans the priority for the start of the week? Thanks for sharing, Kate!

‘Poetry can be all around you’: Kathryn Hunt recounts sharing random acts of poetry

Photo Credit: Brian Pirie

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

A volunteer at the Arc Poetry table during ArtsPark

Last weekend I spent a day helping to man the Arc Poetry Magazine table at ArtsPark in the Parkdale Market in Hintonburg. ArtsPark has been running since 2004, helping to boost and celebrate the burgeoning arts district that Hintonburg has become, but this is the first time I’ve been able to go. (I used to live in Hintonburg, but it was a rather sketchier part of the city back then…)

When I arrived at the Parkdale Market it was a misty day — not quite raining. But that didn’t seem to have affected the crowds, who were already milling around the stands, sipping local coffee and munching local snacks. I locked my bike up to one of the (many) bike racks, and headed in to the collection of tables, stands and canopies in search of the Arc table. I found it just inside the park, under one of the permanent canopies, next to the ArtsPark information table. It was already staffed by a cluster of poets, some of whom had been wandering around the park performing ‘random acts of poetry’: stopping passersby and offering to read them a poem from a collection of chapbooks and small press publications.

Photo Credit: Brian Pirie

We had a ‘poetry factory’ set up: two metal boards covered in magnetic words, so that anyone passing could spend a few moments moving words around and creating a poem. Anyone who created a poem would get a chance to draw for a prize – a free copy of Arc, or even a year’s subscription. There was also a typewriter , which drew a lot of attention, where volunteer poets would, for a dollar or two, compose a poem on the spot for passersby.

It’s kind of amazing that there are some people who, when you ask them, “Hey, would you like a poem?” look at you in suspicion, mumble something like, “No thanks,” and sidle away as though you just offered them –- oh, I don’t know, a political tract or a credit card application. But it’s also amazing that there are people who when you offer them a poem written, on the spot, just for them, light up. “Really? You’ll write me a poem?”

Kids stop by the Arc Poetry table

People asked for poems for their children — often poems for infants in arms who won’t be able to read the poems for years. (By which time these poems will probably all be recycling: One of the interesting thing about the whole poetry factory idea, for me, is that all the poems are ephemeral. They’re not high art, they’re not going to last forever. This was a celebration of the fact that poetry can be all around you, and it can be just for fun, and it can be not meant to last.) They also wanted poems for occasions – there were at least two birthday poems composed, that I saw.

Mayor Jim Watson stops by the Arc Poetry table

The Mayor came by the table, wrote his own magnetic poem,  tossed his toonie into the jar and asked Pearl Pirie, who was manning the typewriter just then, to write a poem about Hintonburg. Others reached into the jar for a random subject (words and phrases cut out of magazines). A young man in a Yasir Naqvi jacket asked for a poem about public service. And inevitably, when they were handed their typewritten sheet with their typo-laden, brand-new poem on it, their faces burst into grins.

Meanwhile, around us there were  kids playing in the still-empty wading pool and on the large orange spheres that are scattered around the new Parkdale Market park, stands selling local crafts and foods, and a stage with alternating musical and spoken word performers. (We were a little too far away to catch every word of the sets by PrufRock, Ian Keteku and John Akpata, but phrases drifted over to us from the stage from time to time.) A unicyclist appeared, juggled for a few moments, attracting a crowd of young children who would run to grab the pins when he dropped them. After a while I spotted him unicycling around the park with a cluster of small children running after him in a stream like the tail of a comet.

Photo Credit: Brian Pirie

We packed up around 5 pm, along with the rest of the fair, and went our separate ways from the Arc table. I didn’t get out to see much of the rest of the festival (although I made a couple of trips to a nearby vendor’s table, where they were serving coffee that tasted, slightly, of cinnamon). But from where I was standing, behind the poetry table, it was a success. The sun even came out for the last hour or so. And I got to spend a day making poetry fun for people. Reminding them that poetry doesn’t have to be deathless, it doesn’t have to be scary or complicated or hard to understand, it isn’t made in isolation or in some strange artistic trance: Poetry can happen anywhere.

Wow! Thanks for sharing! And Kathryn will be performing with her poetry/storytelling troupe, the Kymeras, this Saturday at 8 p.m. in nearby Almonte, at the Old Town Hall.

Spring in the air? Must be time for Ottawa’s Writers Festival!

Participants in the 2010 OIWF sign books (Photo Credit: Pearl Pirie, via Flickr)

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

Steve Heighton at the 2010 Fest

The literary calendar of Ottawa has rolled back around, and it’s that time of year again . . . Festival time! The Ottawa International Writers Festival’s Spring Edition kicks off on Thursday. (Although, I hope you didn’t miss local writer Michael Blouin’s book launch Wednesday night, either. If you’ve been following the reviews, this book – Wore Down Trust – is going to be very big.)

I’m not sure what the literary scene in Ottawa would look like without the Writers Festival. It certainly would be poorer. The Festival’s been running since 1997, and by now it’s firmly established as a place for the literary community to get together and celebrate – and for others who might not be as involved throughout the year to get their dose of books and ideas.

Local Tourist Kathryn Hunt

For anyone who’s never been, it might be a surprise that these readings are, really, fun; it’s not like going to a class or lecture just because it’s somehow good for you. If you like the feeling of having your brain turned on – that set of sparks that happens when you make new connections, see things differently, when you learn something fascinating – then the Festival is like a big playground. Curious about quantum mechanics? Foreign countries? Other cultures? Political possibilities? Predicting the future? How our brains work? Understanding other people? Want to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, see how far you could be pushed, or just to play with words and sounds? If you’ve ever tuned in to one of those excerpts from the TED lectures online, watched a documentary, or enjoyed a story, there’s probably something you’ll like at the Festival.

Neil Wilson (left) interviews Harvey Cashore on Mulroney, Schreiber and the Airbus Scandal

This season . . . well, I’m reluctant to make recommendations, because everyone’s taste is different, although I ran down the stuff that I was excited about a while back, in my lit blog. Along with getting in on a bunch of the literary events, I’ll be trying to catch as much poetry as possible, and sneaking into the back to sit in on the science lectures. (One of my first ever Writers Festival experiences was years ago, when I crept in to a talk on string theory physics in a room that was so packed I had to sit on the floor with my legs stretched out over the carpet. At the end, a 10-year-old boy asked a question that not only astonished the speaker, but had the audience applauding.) But you pick what you want to go to: There will be speakers talking about fiction, poetry, music, science, politics, human rights, philosophy, religion, science fiction, graphic novels, psychology … and if you want to work on your own writing skills there are Masterclass sessions on short story writing and poetry. (Plus everything you can learn from onstage interviews, panel talks, and Q & A sessions.)

Audience member asks a question at the 2010 Fest

I will let you know that alongside the national and international luminaries there is a pretty stellar collection of writers from here in Ottawa: local superstar Elizabeth Hay for one, but there is also the aforementioned Michael Blouin, the Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner, children’s writer JC Sulzenko, the sound poetry group Messagio Galore, headed up and curated by local avant-garde writer jwcurry,  and rising local poets Pearl Pirie and Sandra Ridley.

But, as I said, everyone’s interested in different things. The good thing is, if having new ideas, feeling your world get a little bigger, or seeing things differently is as exhilarating a feeling for you as it is for me. . . you’ve got nearly a full week full of chances to feel like that.

Thanks for the primer, Kate! Check it out all the details at www.writersfestival.org.

Storytelling for adults: Kathryn Hunt spends a night with the Ottawa Storytellers

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs,performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

When was the last time someone told you a story? I don’t mean, exactly, the last time you were at a party and someone had you rolling with laughter over something that happened at work, although that’s close. I mean, when was the last time you sat down and let someone tell you a story – use their words to paint a picture for you, move you, take you to a faraway place or into someone else’s shoes?

Local Tourist Kathryn Hunt

For a lot of people, that last time might have been as far away as childhood. But storytelling for adults is an ancient tradition, and it has by no means disappeared into the mists of time. If it’s been a very long time since you heard a story told to you – not read, not acted, but told – then you might be surprised at how many people are carrying on the tradition, telling folk tales and myths, personal stories and history, ghost stories, tall tales, and even literary stories, in venues across the city.

One organization putting on storytelling events throughout the year is the Ottawa Storytellers. The OST puts on several series: the Shenkman Centre series, Stories and Tea at the Tea Party in the Market, a monthly Story Swap where new storytellers can try out their material,  a series at the Billings Estate, featured performers at Once Upon a Slam (similar to a poetry slam, where storytellers go head-to-head in front of audience judges with short, five-minute stories), and the Fourth Stage Series at the National Arts Centre.

I mention that last series in particular, because recently I got to be in the audience for a Fourth Stage show: the Irish storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy was in Canada touring her show On The Heels of the Hound, an exploration of ancient Irish myths. It’s a full-length concert, bringing together a half-dozen stories: creation myths, origin stories, and tales from the time when the island of Ireland was inhabited by gods and monsters.

Clare Muireann Murphy

The room was pretty full when I came sneaking in minutes before the show, set with chairs around small tables. The Fourth Stage is a great space for shows like this – the audience seating is wide and shallow, so that everyone is relatively close to the performer. And I was in luck: my friends knew I was going to be running in at the last minute, and saved me a seat with them, at the front.

Murphy came on stage singing, in a white dress with a green shawl and carrying a polished gnarled wooden staff. As the room quieted, she walked a circle on the stage and then turned to the audience and introduced the show: bringing the audience in and engaging with them right away, asking them to call out the things they already knew about Ireland. It was pretty clear she wasn’t just going to stand up there, separate from us, and tell the stories: we were going to be part of this adventure. And the tone she struck from then on confirmed that.

Representation of On the Heels of the Hound

While she could get lofty and vividly descriptive with her words, something about the updated, conversational, “this is all happening in a time and place we can recognize” tone she used kept the myths she was telling fresh: These stories are thousands of years old, but she kept them from feeling distant. You could relate to these people, which is one of the things I find so interesting about the Irish legends. The characters are very human, even when they’re gods. They have human failings and passions and fears and loves – and senses of humor – and Murphy brought that out. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so much compassion for Fionn mac Cumhail in his search for his lost wife, or for little, stubborn, innocent, pigheaded, terrifying Setanta. (He grows up to be the hero Cuchulainn, who Murphy described as “like Hercules, but psychotic and homicidal.”) But she could also elevate her language and presentation to the level of epic, and I’m not sure I breathed during the warrior poet Amairgin’s crossing of the nine waves to land in Ireland.

The National Arts Centre

The sound effects and different voices she could produce with just her voice were amazing, and she leaped from character to character, becoming a a warrior poet, a snorting, belching, repulsive giant, a crafty old Druidess, a deer, an arrogant king, a snarling dog, a little boy – often back and forth between lines of dialogue. She spoke straight to the audience – to particular people in the audience at times – involving us in the story as well. We became, through the show, the chant that healed King Nuada’s arm, the sound of the wind, servants put to sleep by magic, druids or warriors being chosen for a task, and by the end, the chorus of the song she’d been singing between stories. So in a way we became shapeshifters as much as she did, as did her staff and shawl, which became different objects through the stories as well.

I walked out feeling as though I’d just been in touch with a tradition that went back thousands of years, but that was also alive and well, and very current.

If you want to check out some storytelling near you: the next Ottawa Storytellers events will be Once Upon a Slam, featuring dub poet Klyde Broox, this Friday at the Mercury Lounge; the Story Swap (you can come just to listen, or bring a story to share) on April 7 at Library and Archives; or the Tea Party series, on April 12 (The Frozen Thames with Phil Nagy and Mary Wiggin.) The Fourth Stage series returns April 21, with Love Stories. Details are all at www.ottawastorytellers.ca.

Have any other tips on Ottawa’s storytelling scene? Tell us about it by leaving a comment below!

Bridging page vs. stage: VERSeFest brings poetry communities together

All photos are courtesy of Pearl Pirie

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

The closing night party might have summed up VERSeFest almost entirely.

VERSe Ottawa, a new coalition of poetry fans, reading series and slams across the city, just wrapped up its first annual festival, VERSeFest, running from March 8 to 13, and the feeling in the room at Arts Court was celebratory. Actually, it was better than that, it felt like something new, necessary, and long-awaited, had happened.

PrufRock at Capital Slam

Poetry is a strange beast. It’s hard to define, and within the blanket term “poetry” you find a wide variety of styles and artistic opinions. It’s as though you lumped all “music” into one category and then had to compare Lady Gaga to Tuvan throat-singing, Noh opera to Haydn. The term “poetry” takes in everything from hip hop lyrics to sound poetry (which, in turn, crosses over into performance art and experimental music). And at VERSeFest, for the first time, one festival took in the same wide range.

Nathanael Larochette

Sooner or later, you get the impression that poetry is split into two camps. The big divide recently has been “page” versus “stage.” At a broad sweep, “stage” poetry might be characterized as appealing to a younger, louder, “hipper” demographic. Its content is often political, and its style is often influenced by the traditions of hip hop and jazz poetry. “Page” poetry, in contrast, is often stereotyped as being academic, quiet, sometimes difficult to understand at first reading or hearing, It can be very experimental in its use of language and sentence structure, or very formal in meter and structure. Or both. “Page” poets will probably be hawking their latest chapbook, rather than a CD of their work, at the end of their readings.

I am, personally, a poetry omnivore, with a foot in either side. I volunteer regularly at Capital Slam, the city’s oldest competitive spoken word series, and I also used to help with the Dusty Owl Reading Series, which is fairly “page.” My own poetry is page-oriented and I just don’t get up to compete on slam stages. However, I’ve also memorized and performed my work, and the performance group I belong to contains two storytellers, a spoken word artist and me, the page poet.

Local Tourist, Kate, at VERSeFest

Which is why the closing party for VERSeFest was so much fun for me. There used to be a sense of “never the twain shall meet” about the two domains, which was blown away as the room was treated to everything from haiku, to love poems, to rhythmic slam poems, to soft, stark, stripped-away and syntax-busting poems, to a dose of sound poetry. (It involved the audience participating by making “tockatockatocka” sounds for about ten seconds at one point in the poem, interrupted by a building roar/scream from the poet and a few people placed in the audience: a strange stereo experience for those of us sitting in the middle of it.)

It was fun for me — throughout VERSeFest — to watch members of the audience from the “stage” side of things snapping their fingers (a spoken-word tradition) for good lines from the “page” poets. To hear the festival organizer getting choked up as he talked about the new friends he’d made among the “stage” community and the new kinds of poetry he’d discovered. And to start seeing the continuity between the different styles — to hear some of the same tricks of repetition, word play, and imagery happening in much of the poetry being read.

If you thought poetry readings were staid and stodgy, you’d have been astonished at the audiences that sold out the Arts Court Theatre until they were sitting in the aisles for the Urban Legends Slam, rocking the room with cheers for the performers. You’d have been shocked by the burlesque routine that wrapped up the Voices of Venus erotic poetry show, surprised by the audience that rose to their feet after an open mike poet read her impassioned description of the hardships of a homeless shelter, and puzzled at the music floating from the room at the Songwriters’ Circle. And you might also have been mesmerized by long, lyrical pieces, found yourself laughing out loud more than a few times, strained to hear through more than one voice performing simultaneously, and learned to listen very, very carefully as unexpected images rose from the reader’s voice.

The thing is, poetry has a long tradition of being performed aloud for a reason. People come out to poetry readings for a reason — because it’s enjoyable. Poetry and music are akin, and the sound of the language is most of the point of any form of poetry. This inaugural VERSeFest illustrated that handily; I can’t wait to see what they bring to the stage next year.

(Photo credit: Pearl Pirie)

 

VERSeFest’s participating reading series, organizations and slams where you can check out local poetry: Urban Legends Slam, The AB Series, In/Words, blUe mOnday, Dusty Owl, Sasquatch Writers Performance Series, Voices of Venus, Tree Reading Series, Plan 99, KaDo Haiku Ottawa, Factory Reading Series, and Capital Slam.

And if it’s literary, and taking place in Ottawa, it’s probably on the bywords.ca events calendar.

(Photo credit: Pearl Pirie)

 

Thanks for sharing your experience, Kate! And the beautiful photos are courtesy of Pearl Pirie. Do you want to highlight a live performance taking place in Ottawa? Drop us a line.

Nathanael Larochette

Learning to love Ottawa and its literary scene: Welcome to Local Tourist Kathryn Hunt

Kathryn Hunt  is a displaced Maritimer who first arrived in Ottawa 15 years ago. A published poet and freelance writer, Kate blogs, performs and talks the city’s budding literary scene at every opportunity! She also enjoys cycling and rock-climbing in her spare time.

I’ve been living in Ottawa, off and on, for over a decade, having moved here from New Brunswick to go to Carleton University. At the time, a friend who was living off Somerset, in the heart of Chinatown, told me that people either come to Ottawa temporarily or they fall, often unexpectedly, in love with it and stay. She said she hoped I’d turn out, like her, to be in the latter group.

Much, much later, I suppose I have. But it wasn’t until I chose to leave Ottawa, and then chose to return, that I really started to get involved in this city. After university, I moved out of Ottawa to spend a couple of years teaching English in Japan. And when I came back, I came back on the ground floor of a grass-roots literary and arts scene that was just about to blaze into life.

Poetry reading series were starting to make a resurgence; there were independent publishers and zine distribution groups cropping up; I started seeing what was going on in the arts beyond the National Arts Centre and the National Gallery. I found small galleries, small theatres, cafes hosting open mike nights and poetry readings, guerilla sound poetry performances, indie craft and zine fairs, and storytellers gathering in tea houses to trade tales. I started to get to know the people making the photocopied posters that go up all over downtown.

There’s a whole arts world going on that it feels like the rest of Ottawa is just beginning to get to know – but for the people involved in it, it’s bursting with action.

After the first Canadian Spoken WordLympics (now known as the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word) were held here in 2004, the literary scene – which was already rich with established reading series like Tree, Sasquatch, Plan 99 and the Dusty Owl, as well as one of the country’s oldest and biggest literary festivals, the Ottawa International Writers Festival – exploded with young, urban, ambitious, passionate poets.

Capital Slam was founded, the first poetry slam series; it’s since been followed by a host of other slams, spoken word and reading series. The Storytellers’ Festival was reimagined and reborn last fall. And this winter the city’s first Storytelling Slam started up in the basement of the Mercury Lounge and has already needed to move upstairs, where there’s more space for its growing audience.

As the national capital, it’s sometimes seemed to me that Ottawa is of two minds about the arts. There are the international stars and events at the NAC and the National Gallery, the stadium concerts and big-ticket festivals, and then there is a local scene, which is creative, tight-knit, thriving, and beginning to get noticed. I’m really happy to participate in that local scene, as a performer, as a writer, and as an audience member: I blog on words in performance at freerangeprint.blogspot.com, perform with the Kymeras, a poetry/storytelling group, co-host CKCU’s Literary Landscape radio program, and hope to keep celebrating this town’s creativity and spirit.

Kate will be spending her free time this week taking in VERSefest, a new, annual poetry festival running until Sunday at the Arts Court.  Check back soon to here her thoughts on this sure-to-be-amazing celebration of spoken word.