Janice Lee aims to give her audiences positive vibes while feeding their critical skills.|Photo by Mat McCarthy, courtesy of Verses Festival of Words
Vancouver’s Verses Festival of Words, which runs from April 5 to 12, allows poetry to jump off the page and come alive as both a theatrical performance and an interactive, transformative experience for the audience. In addition to events and workshops, the festival features The Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship, where poets are judged by randomly selected members of the audience, with the winner poised to represent English Canada in the World Cup of Poetry Slam in Paris.
Harnessing the rhythm
Though Verses welcomes all manner of poetry, the focus of the festival is a genre called spoken word.
“Spoken word draws on the oral traditions of poetry. It includes storytelling, stand-up comedy and lyric poetry,” says Chris Gilpin, the festival’s managing director.
Spoken word poetry is not simply read: it is performed. d’bi.young anitafrika is an internationally renowned African-Jamaican-Canadian poet, dramatist and educator, who will, among other engagements, hold a Spoken Word Masterclass on April 8.
She views dub, a Jamaican-origin form of spoken word she often uses, as deeply in tune with the rhythmic aspects of language.
“Dub pays homage to the eternal rhythm of everything, beginning with the heartbeat: it always honours the rhythm in the language, in movement, in the ecosystem,” she says.
Kevan “Scruffmouth the Scribe” Cameron, a dub poet and Grand Champion of the 2008 Vancouver Poetry Slam who will perform at the Pan American Slam on April 9, explains that the oral nature of spoken word motivates the poet to consider the reception of their work in a different manner.
“The oral element of dub poetry forces you to consider your audience as listeners first,” he says.
Storytelling, an archetypal backbone of all cultures, is also a central ingredient of the form.
“I find that spoken word returns to the roots of poetry and storytelling, in that it is a communal experience. It exists in the air between people,” says Janice Lee, an Ontario-based spoken word poet, singer-songwriter and community organizer, who will be featured in Shake Yo’ Fist and Talk the Talk: Race events on April 10.
Personifying the political
Lee loves spoken word because she believes that it removes barriers between performers and audiences, and allows the words that course through a poet’s body to convey unfiltered truths, often erasing the line between the personal and the political.
John Akpata is a spoken word poet, art educator and radio broadcaster from Ottawa, who will appear in the Pan American Slam on April 9. Though he values educational and entertainment aspects of poetry, he believes its most vital role is to promote social change.
“I have always believed that the value and purpose of poetry is to radically alter people’s consciousness. When people speak their truth, it has an amazing amount of transformative power,” says Akpata.
For Cameron, a first generation Canadian-Jamaican of African descent, the social values stemming from his cultural background inform his poetic sensibilities.
“Many of the values, morals and life lessons of African-Caribbean culture come from stories, songs, proverbs and poems. I hope that my work not only disseminates this knowledge, but is used to govern right action and intent,” he says.
Heart over mind
d’bi.young anitafrika, a renowned dub poet, dramatist and educator, seeks to inspire social change and personal growth through her work. | Photo by courtesy of Verses Festival of Words
For d’bi.young, art-making is a socio-political, yet also a deeply personal process. Her work is as steeped in the magic and spirituality of her Jamaican heritage as it is unmistakeably feminist and critical.
d’bi.young explains that to her the spirit and politics are deeply inter-connected, and that all social change inevitably starts with a spiritual and emotional transformation.
“When you listen to a storyteller, your heart is moved, [and] then you can get the energy to move your mind,” she says.
The idea that being expressly political does not necessarily involve the intellect alone is something that Lee can relate to.
“I want to be gentle with the community and share lots of love. I also want to call audiences to be critical…Poets have power, and they ought to be checked by audiences,” says Lee.
The connection between the personal and the political is only one of the many topics Verses is interested in exploring.
“We need to redefine the idea of a writer in the 21st century. Maybe we should be realizing that being a writer is not entirely book-centric, and look at singer/songwriters as poets, and stand-up comedians as writers,” says Gilpin.
For more information on the 2014 Verses Festival of Words, visit www.versesfestival.ca, and follow them on twitter @vanpoetryhouse, #VS14
