VERSe Ottawa

The final reading of the VERSeFEST 2020 fall festival offers a peek behind the curtain to hear the VERSeFest organizers read. (Hey, we’re poets too!). Please register for a link ahead of time at: https://versefest.ca/year/2020/

Brandon Wint’s stunning debut collection, Divine Animal, reckons with the ways the logic of colonialism has brought humankind into an era of ecological devastation, climate change catastrophe and eco-grief. In this way, Brandon offers a thoughtful, empathetic poetics that seeks to re-connect the human world with the natural world. Divine Animal is a work that lives powerfully at the intersection of celebration and grief. These poems testify to the realities of beauty on Earth..., while casting a necessary eye upon the human proclivity to invent sophisticated, resilient modes of violence and inequity. Brandon reads with Andre Fenton online tonight at 7:30 PM ET. Go to versefest.ca to join the event. To be alive is to be a strand of light remembering how to swim. A humble, imitating sun learning the rite of burning without destroying. From Divine Animal (Write Bloody North). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOl57oYxf-o

Coming up at 4:30 PM ET. Don’t miss three stunning virtual readings with Lindsay B-e, Monika Rinck, and Oana Avasilichioaei. Lindsay B-e's The Cyborg Anthology melds sci-fi and poetry, human and machine. Berliner Monika Rinck writes poems of pointed social critique. And performer, translator and poet Oana Avasilichioaei writes of surveillance and resistance in Eight Track. Join the reading and live chat at https://versefest.ca/year/2020/

Coming up at 3 PM ET: VERSeFest presents our virtual Tree reading with three exciting poets. D.A. Lockhart’s poems record the common person and the famous in his fourth collection. K. B. Thors’ Vulgar Mechanics (Coach House, 2019) pushes boundaries of language, trauma and place. And Ottawa poet Nicola Vulpe undertakes an intelligent survey of deep history in Insult to the Brain (Guernica). Join the event online at https://versefest.ca/year/2020/ and log in for the live chat afterwards.

Is there anything better than that new book smell? Congratulations to Jeff Blackman, our latest winner in our grand festival book bundle giveaway! We are so grateful to our online audience this year for sticking with us as we go virtual for 2020. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, but we’ve learned a lot and enjoyed a whole lot of poetry along the way. Stay tuned for our weekend festival programming continuing tonight and through the weekend.

Coming up at 1 PM ET: VERSeFest presents our Factory Reading Series lectures by prize-winning poets J.R. Carpenter and Shazia Hafiz Ramji. Join the event online at https://versefest.ca/year/2020/ and log in for the live chat afterwards. J.R. Carpenter is Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and researcher working across performance, print, and digital media. Her web-based work The Gathering Cloud won the New Media Writing Prize in 2016. Her poetry collection An Ocean of Sta...tic was highly commended for the Forward Prize in 2018. Her next collection, This is a Picture of Wind, is forthcoming from Longbarrow Press in April 2020. She is a fellow of the Eccles Centre at the British Library and the Moore Institute at NUI Gallway. She will be writer in residence at University of Alberta September 2020 May 2021. http://luckysoap.com Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award, 2019 BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her poetry has recently appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, THIS magazine, and is forthcoming in Gutter Magazine (UK) and Maisonneuve. Her poetry and nonfiction have been nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prizes and her fiction has appeared in subTerrain and The Humber Literary Review. She is a columnist for OpenBook and is at work on a novel.

Congratulations to Leeca St. Aubin, our third winner in the VF2020 festival book bundle giveaway! If you're keen on winning some new swag for your bookshelves, virtual audience members are eligible. Join us online until November 22nd for some of the best poetry on the planet.

We’re excited to present a fine evening of virtual poetry tonight: Ottawa poet David O’Meara hosts Plan 99 with Conyer Clayton, Ken Babstock, and Annick Macaskill. Join us 7:30 PM ET at https://versefest.ca/year/2020/#saturdaynightplans #ottawafestivals #poetry

Do you need a burrito blanket to write a poem? The answer to this question and more lies in this short video with Lindsay B-e who takes on a tour of her writing space and offers insight into her writing process. Visit her poet page on our website and scroll down to the Bonus Feature. (Writing Spaces online; developed for VF2020). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGSEEQ589OI&feature=youtu.be

Books books books! We are catching up on our festival book bundle giveaways! Our second winner is Maya Chorney! Our fall festival runs until November 22nd. Tune in to our events for your opportunity to win a sanitized book bundle safely delivered to your mailbox.

What would you discuss with your favourite poet if you had the opportunity? For the chance to participate in a one-on-one video chat with Kaie Kellough, Phil Metres, Ken Babstock, J.R. Carpenter, DA Lockhart, or Éric Charlebois, send an email to [email protected] telling us what you want to talk about, and we'll do our best to set it up. 4:30 6:30 PM ET TODAY. Que discuteriez-vous avec votre poète préféré si vous en aviez l’occasion? Envoyez-nous un courriel à [email protected].

Look out the poet’s eye as Gabrielle Marceau takes us on a walk through her city. Visit her poet page on our website and scroll down to the Bonus Feature. (Writing Spaces online; developed for VF2020). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bIDCGSo3HM&feature=youtu.be