Starting tonight from 6:45-7:45 at the Arts Court, floor 2A is a new session of Pre-Tree workshops. This one, with rob mclennan, runs thru April and May. There will be focal readings and exercises.
The emphasis will be on the contemporary. To paraphrase rob…to take a poetry course and learn about 1800s poetry doesn’t seem right somehow. What if you took a computer class and when you got there you were told you’d be learning all the ins and outs of a 486? What are people doing well now?
You can bring in poems you want workshopped as with any session.
With June comes a special one-time-spot with Cameron Anstee on the second Tuesday, then TA Carter on the 4th Tuesday talking about beat poets and their legacy.
July will be Guy Simser looking at the current practice of the tanka on both sides of the pond.
These are free to the public thanks to grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Every Tuesday is the Dusty Owl Play Date at 8:00 pm. Mother Tongue Books, 1067 Bank Street. There’s a prompt, writing time and then group sharing of stories composed. (There’s a donation requested.)
The Recipe is a group at Umi Cafe holding workshops on spoken word poetry each Wednesday at 7 p.m..
instruction on all things related to spoken word, from the history of the art and its place in a society to tips on how to breathe properly when performing.
“The important thing is that they understand what spoken word is,” says Keteku, who teaches the sessions on performance. “Anybody can read a poem onstage. It takes something else to share a message.”
To hear some spoken word, this Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at East Africa Restaurant, (376 Rideau St.) is the monthly spoken word series of Oneness Poetry Showcase. This time is is Shauntay Grant (the Poet Laureate of Halifax) and Kevin Matthews of SWAN).
What a city! Looking at the Bywords listing there are 2-9 listed literary events in Ottawa per day.
The city seems to compete for number of politicians and number of writers. And probably, including all the closeted writers, the politicians are far exceeded.