Canadian Festival of Spoken Word

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The Canadian Festival of Spoken Word is an annual festival produced by Spoken Word Canada and planned by a local Festival Planning Committee in each host city.

There have been four festivals -- the inaugural 2004 gathering in Ottawa, Ontario (called the Canadian Spoken Wordlympics), the 2005 festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, CFSW 2006 in Toronto, Ontario and CFSW 2007 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Future festivals are in the planning stages for 2008 in Calgary, Alberta and 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia.

In four short years, the CFSW has become the flagship event for poetry slam in Canada, and is evolving to better represent the full spectrum of spoken word nationally.

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[edit] Festival History

The Canadian Spoken Wordlympics was created by a group of spoken word artists who wanted to have a national showcase of spoken word talent in Canada. They saw the success of the National Poetry Slam in the United States and envisioned a similar poetry slam event for Canada drawing national and international attention. The founders of the festival decided the first event should be held in Ottawa in fall 2004. An organizing team was pulled together and a successful application was made to the Canada Council for the Arts for financial support for the four-day event.

[edit] 2004 Canadian Spoken Wordlympics - Ottawa

The inaugural festival was held at the National Library and Archives in October 2004, and featured several poetry slams held in the evenings, with showcase events and open mics in the afternoons. Several poets from international locations such as France, the U.S. and the United Kingdom also participated in various facets of the festival. Showcases for women, Aboriginal peoples, urban poets, queer poets and youth were held, and there was a guerrilla reading on the front lawn of the Parliament buildings.

Slam teams representing Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Halifax and Winnipeg participated in the first team championship competition, with the Vancouver 1 team emerging victorious.

At a meeting of city representatives held during the Wordlympics, Vancouver was selected as the site for the 2005 festival. However, the event was renamed the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in its second year because of copyright concerns expressed by organizers of the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Olympic Games.

[edit] 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word - Vancouver

The 2005 festival organizing committee, led by Randy Jacobs, took the opportunity to broaden the focus of the event. Open mic events started with a live band jamming with poets reciting improv-style on stage, and feature performers were brought into the evening events. Showcases were held in the afternoons for queer poets, African-Canadian poets, youth and others, while Aboriginal poets, sound poets, storytellers and others performed in the evening slots.

The cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg competed in the slam competition, with Vancouver 2 retaining the championship for the home city for the second year in a row.

The “poet of honour” award was also introduced in Vancouver. Dwayne Morgan, Canadian Urban Music Award-winning poet, and Sheri-D Wilson, director of the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, were the first Poets of Honour. They were invited to perform feature sets during the festival.

[edit] CFSW 2006 Toronto

The third annual festival took place in Toronto. The festival organizing committee, led by Dwayne Morgan and David Silverberg, took the event one step further by introducing a conference component to the festival. Workshops on recording spoken word CDs, touring, applying for grants and creating team pieces were woven into the afternoon events, along with showcases featuring dub poetry, African-Canadian poetry, queer poets, nerd poets and youth.

The Poets of Honour were Lillian Allen, Juno award-winning dub poet, and Shane Koyczan, the first non-American to win the U.S. National Poetry Slam.

Eight cities entered teams into the slam competition – Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax, Calgary, Montreal and Windsor – though Windsor and Montreal ended up withdrawing from the competition. The slam went ahead with seven teams when a second Toronto team was added at the last minute. The hastily assembled Toronto 2 team performed extremely well, narrowly losing in the team finals to Vancouver. This enabled the defending champions to win the title for the third consecutive year.

The 2006 Spoken Word Canada annual board meeting in Toronto set CFSW on new course by bestowing the right to host the 2007 festival on Halifax and inviting Calgary to be the host city in 2008. For future years, Spoken Word Canada decided to award the festival to host cities two years in advance.

[edit] CFSW 2007 Halifax

The most recent festival was hosted by the Word Iz Bond Spoken Word Artists' Collective in Halifax. The festival organizing committee, led by Shauntay Grant, incorporated other artistic forms into the festival. Beginning with a showcase called "Halifax in Poetry", the festival showcased poets working with musicians during their performances. There was also a showcase involving youth workshopping their poetry with the assistance of professional jazz artists, and an innovative Poetry Challenge combining spoken word artists, musicians and visual art on display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The festival also included open mic sessions, panel discussions and guerilla poetry readings on the streets of Halifax.

On finals night the festival honoured Darek Dawda, one of the festival's founders, and the late Rita Joe, a noted Nova Scotia based Mi'kmaq-Canadian poet and songwriter.

Seven cities were represented in the team slam competition -- Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Halifax and Toronto (with two teams). After a highly competitive preliminary round and an energized final competition, the home team from Halifax broke Vancouver's winning streak to become the second city to capture the Canadian team championship in the history of CFSW.

[edit] Future Festivals

CFSW 2008 Calgary is in the planning stages. Sheri-D Wilson is the festival organizing committee chair. The 2008 festival will happen at the end of October so as to avoid a scheduling conflict with the annual WordFest writer's festival.

At Halifax, the Spoken Word Canada board of directors selected Victoria as the next festival host city. A festival organizing committee will be formed there in the coming months under the leadership of board vice-chair shayne avec i grec.

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[edit] See also