Verse Ottawa, a collective of Ottawa’s poetry organizations, is pressing city councillors to restore the city’s poet laureate program, a literary tradition Ottawa hasn’t participated in for more than a decade – and the planned revival of which was cut from last year’s arts budget.
In the poetry world, it’s the equivalent of being chosen to carry the Olympic flag across the stadium – an honour given to a person to represent the poetic and creative talent of a city or country.
The tradition, dating back to 17th-century England, is celebrated in cities across Canada, from Toronto to Vancouver and even the Parliament of Canada, yet Ottawa hasn’t had a poet laureate since the 1990s.
“This is something the community has felt we needed for a long time,” says Rod Pederson, director of the Tree Reading series at Arts Court theatre.
In 2012, Verse Ottawa proposed the revival of the poet laureate before the city’s cultural committee, with a planned budget of $1 a year. The program was approved and the committee increased the budget to $25,000, a standard amount for a laureate program in Canada.
The program was intended to run in 2014; however, to the dismay of Ottawa’s poetry community, the planned funding was cut from the arts budget last year.
Now, Pederson wants to reinstate the initial $1 budget and says he is even willing to pay for it himself.
“There’s been some talk about assigning a more significant amount than a dollar a year, but if we do that, what’s to prevent next year’s budget from being just as tight as last year’s?” he says. “We don’t want to see the program disappear again.”
City Coun. Mark Taylor recently met with Pederson to discuss the renewal of the program. As a result, he says the city plans to reinstate the program by 2015, although the proposed $1 budget will be scrapped.
“If you’re going to have a poet laureate program in the capital it should be funded appropriately,” Taylor says. “We don’t want to just pick a name and then not do anything to promote it.”
Other costs such as an honorarium, as well as funding events and publications for the laureate, need to be considered, says Taylor.
For Amanda Earl, a poet and writer in Ottawa, the poet laureate program would ensure that the poetic arts continue to thrive in the capital.
“It would help to make sure that people understood there are creative forces to be reckoned with here,” she says, “especially for young people to know this exists and that poetry and poets are alive – it’s not just for the dead guys.”
The city hopes to have a poet laureate chosen by this time next year.