April is National Poetry Month and this year Spruce is excited to be helping Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie promote its National Competition. On April 24, nine finalists in three categories—English, French and Bilingual—will give their best recitation of a poem they have selected from Poetry In Voice’s library. Sitting front row will be some of Canada’s most respected poets, including Marie-Célie Agnant, Michael Crummey, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, Susan Musgrave and Chloé Savoie-Bernard, who will decide who best articulates the intent of the poem and its poet.
“Hearing these young voices articulate the words of some of our finest poets, I always leave the National Finals inspired and transformed,” says executive director David Smith. “It’s no accident that teachers return to our recitation competitions year after year, or that students describe the experience as one of the most significant of their lives.”
Hosted at the National Arts Centre, the event will also highlight 16 Future Verse participants. Over the last year, these students wrote and submitted poems to Poetry In Voice’s journal and were selected to present their poetry at the National Competition. Among them is Kyo Lee, a young poet from Waterloo, Ontario, who recently performed at Ottawa’s Riverbed Reading Series as part of the joint art exhibition, Negotiating Borders, put on by SAW Gallery and the Korean Cultural Centre of Canada.
These 25 students will spend four days in Ottawa working with well-known authors, publishers and activists to develop their unique poetry voices. They will also get acquainted with the poets, geography and history of the Ottawa-Gatineau region as they partake in the Chasse-Galerie on the river—a poetry scavenger hunt—organized by Ottawa poet and Spruce team member nina jane drystek. The Chasse-Galerie will include some impromptu poetry recitation and poetry-related sidewalk chalk around downtown on April 23 so keep an eye out!
Want to hear more and celebrate poetry? There are a few tickets remaining for the National Competition.
Interested in getting your classroom or kids more involved with poetry? Learn more about Poetry In Voice.
