This week sees the launch of something new – something that hasn’t been done before, not in Ottawa, possibly not even in all of North America. This week – Tuesday, March 8th, in fact – begins VERSeFest, a new annual poetry festival that showcases both the “page” and “stage” events happening in town.
If you’re a poet in Canada, chances are you already know that Ottawa is where it’s at when it comes to poetry. For those of you not (yet) in the know, however: We’re home to the national slam championship team (made up of Brandon Wint, Ikenna “Open Secret” Onyegbula, John Akpata, PrufRock Shadowrunner, and Chris Tse), and to world slam champion Ian Keteku, plus we have a wide variety of different poetry and spoken word scenes. In addition to a number of weekly and monthly poetry slams (including Capital Slam, Cypher Slam, and Urban Legends), there are also numerous poetry showcases (Oneness, The Poetry Show, and Voices of Venus[1], to name a few), and reading series (AB Series, Bywords, the Dusty Owl, Tree…), plus independent performance troupes like Attack of the Dreadlocks, The Recipe (Canada’s 2009 slam champions, fyi), The Copper Conundrum, and the Kymeras (a troupe that mixes poetry with another spoken word art form: storytelling).
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