One of the highlights for this year’s installment of Versefest involves the integration of the city’s first-ever women’s slam championship that took place at the end of January at Arts Court.
The four top-ranked female poets from that event are set to perform on the second day of the festival of “all things poetry.”
“We’ve been discussing the past couple years that there’s been a shortage of women performing and a lack of role models,” says Rusty Priske, the Capital Slam slam master who’s an organizer for Versefest.
The effort to increase the presence of female role models has led organizers to book big-name performers such as American poets Ursula Rucker and Rae Armantrout. This also ties in with the new mandate of broadening the international scope of the event.
“Last year was very local because we didn’t have any funding for things like travel expenses,” says Priske. “This year we got some arts funding and the buzz from last year’s success of more than 1,000 people turning up.”
Priske says the program slots will loosely be split into three segments to promote local artists, local artists from across the country, as well as international artists.
Having tied with Magdala “D-LightFull” Joseph at the women’s championship, slam poet Sepideh Soltaninia says she’s really excited with the incorporation of female poets and international artists.
“Ottawa is often criticized for having a male-dominated spoken word community, so it’s great to see a diversity in voices at the festival,” says Soltaninia, who will be taking part in Versefest for the first time this year.
Soltaninia says she’s also happy with the variety of poetry that is represented at Versefest.
“Versefest brings together slam poets and page poets who focus more on written poetry, so there’s that integration where they can learn from each other.”
Co-champion D-LightFull agrees the festival is unique for supporting a wide range of poetry and artists.
“I definitely like that organizers are looking to go more international this year,” says D-LightFull. “It gives our city more importance to be able to attract more international talent, I mean Ursula Rucker is greatness in the poetry community.”
In addition to performing, Rucker will be holding an exclusive writing workshop on March 4 at the Mercury Lounge. Only 20 reserved tickets are available for this event.
Other workshops include a family-oriented one with Danielle Grégoire and a more intensive poetry workshop with local favourite Ian Keteku.
“The fact that we can bring in someone as big as Rucker goes to show the large number of people in Ottawa who know and appreciate who she is,” says Priske. “It goes to further show that this city is the poetry hub of Canada.”
He says part of re-affirming Ottawa’s status as the poetry hub means making sure the women’s slam championship becomes an annual event.
“It was originally a one-time fundraiser for Versefest, but the quality of the work from female poets is phenomenal and the crowd reaction is overwhelming,” says Priske.
Versefest will be taking place from Feb 28 to March 4. Learn more at www.versefest.com.