Archives for posts with tag: mayors poetry challenge

Poet Laureate Challenge: #writtenrighthere

March 7, 2016 //

To celebrate National Poetry Month and UNESCO World Poetry Day, each year municipalities across Canada are challenged to bring poetry into politics. One mayor leads this annual challenge by inviting a poet to read at a council meeting in March or April, and challenges mayors and councils across the nation to follow suit and join the celebration. Initiated by Regina Mayor Pat Fiacco in 2012, the Mayor’s Poetry City Challenge celebrates poetry, writing, small presses and the contribution of poets and all writers to the rich cultural life in our country. Last year the torch was passed from Regina to Calgary, and Mayor Nenshi’s first challenge was a huge success. With over seventy participants, the 2015 challenge was our largest yet—but we hope for even more in 2016!

As Calgary’s Poet Laureate, I have a challenge for writers and readers across Canada.

I ask that writers and readers across Canada explore how literature has reflected and created their own communities … find spaces of literary importance (homes where writers once lived, areas authors have written about, moments of historic literary import, etc), photograph those spaces and post on twitter with a brief description and the hashtag #writtenrighthere

Check out the writtenrighthere blog!

Help document how Canadian literature reflects and affects how we understand our communities and our place.

It could be an intersection or park named in a book, it could be a mountain range celebrated in a poem, it could be the former home of a beloved poet or the location of a Canadian press; it could be a park named after your favourite literary figure or a surprising connection with how Canadian literature has developed just down the street …

How have the spaces of your community shaped (or been shaped by) literature? Where do you see the spaces that have created Canadian Literature in your community?

#writtenrighthere celebrates literary history … and how writing comes from community.

Tags #natioanl poetry month, #writtenrighthere, #yycarts, #yycpoet, calgary poet laureate, mayors poetry challenge, poetry

Categories YYCPOET

National Poetry Month – Poet Laureate Challenge!

March 7, 2016 //

Calgary’s Poet Laureate derek beaulieu—in partnership with Barrie, Ontario’s Poet Laureate damian lopes have a friendly challenge to Poets Laureate across Canada!

We challenge Canada’s Poets Laureate—the celebrated poets across the nation—to reach out to each other and publish, in a small press edition, a poem by one another that can be distributed in your city’s council chambers.

Lopes and beaulieu challenge Canada’s Poets Laureate to request a poem from one of their fellow Poetry Challenge poets, design and publish a small edition and then graciously distribute that edition to members of their city council during National Poetry month and the Mayor’s Poetry Challenge.

With over 40 years of small press publishing combined, beaulieu and lopes believe that small press publishing is an easy and fun way of distributing poetry—anyone can do it! Any printed and folded page can enclose a poem in a thoughtful, simple means of slowing down the reader with a poetic moment.

These small editions will distribute the nation’s poems to city councilors and put poetry in people’s hands – weaving together the nation’s Poets Laureate into a tapestry of voices celebrated in city chambers across Canada!

Tags damian lopes, league canadian poets, mayors poetry challenge, naheed nenshi, national poetry month, writers guild alberta

Categories Uncategorized

National Poetry Month / Mayor’s Poetry City Challenge

March 30, 2015 //

The Mayor’s proclamation of National Poetry Month

Calgary Mayor Naheed nenshi reading Richard Harrison’s ‘Ode to the Saddledome” under an excerpt of my visual poetry suite “Every word”

“Every word” framed at Calgary’s city hall

The amazing folks at Calgary Arts Development (CADA)

As Calgary’s Poet Laureate I was honoured to read an excerpt from Robert Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue in Council Chambers on March 30, 2015. I also challenged members City Council to find and tweet images, phrases and fragments that they find poetic, using the hashtag #yycpoet.

My visual piece “Every word” alphabetically compiles all the keywords submitted by attendees of the Mayor’s Luncheon. I rubber-stamped, by hand, every word from “Aboriginal” to “Volunteer” gathering the very words that our arts community identified as best representing the arts in Calgary. These are your words, placed into a visual choir of artistic support, a suite of images that turn each letter into an artistic moment. This suite will be on display here at city hall for the week – please take a chance to see what your community has identified as the strengths and calgarian arts.

Calgary’s Mayor Naheed Nenshi recently proclaimed April as National Poetry Month, and Calgary is celebrating and recognizing poets, writers and libraries for their contributions to the identity and quality of life in our communities.

Earlier this year, Mayor Nenshi issued the Mayor’s Poetry City Challenge, encouraging mayors across Canada to have a local poet read a poem at the start of a Council meeting in March or April. The aim is to raise awareness and to celebrate poetry, writing, small presses and the contribution of poets and all writers to the rich cultural life in our country.

Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets, Dymphny Dronyk, the Poet Laureate sponsors and Calgary Arts Development for a great morning!

Tags #yycarts, #yycpoet, cada, calgary poet laureate, mayor's luncheon for the arts, mayors poetry challenge, national poety day, nenshi

Categories YYCPOET

“Every Word”

March 7, 2015 //

I was commissioned by Calgary Arts Development to create a piece of text art in response to the 2015 Mayor’s Lunch for Arts Champions and to be unveiled to Calgary City Council as part of the Mayor’s Poetry Challenge. I have just completed the rubber-stamp folio “Every Word”…