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POW FESTIVAL - 2009 |
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Articles from the Northumberland News ~ http://www.northumberlandnews.com/news/article/122122 Poetry'z
Own Weekend Festival planned for April 17-19
With April being declared National Poetry Month, Cobourg will be the venue for the inaugural POW Festival -- Poetry'zOwn Weekend Festival -- a unique event that is the brain child of Cobourg poet James Pickersgill, creator of poetry'zown, a four-page weekly sheet of poetry presenting the work of members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop Scheduled for the weekend of April 17 to 19, with the workshop's regular monthly reading on April 16 leading off the event, it will include nine poetry readings, a panel discussion about the future of the book in an electronic age, a lecture presentation, two open-mic sessions (the poetry world's equivalent of a jam session) an afternoon devoted to poetry written for children, and sessions on poetry translation and a recitation of the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Service and John Keats. "Several of our local poets attended a weekend poetry festival in Cobalt last year," Pickersgill says, "and I thought, if they can do it in Cobalt, why not in Cobourg? "There will be events going on across Canada during Poetry Month but few of them will be weekend festivals. Because of our regular monthly readings, Cobourg has become a go-to place for a lot of poets and publishers and we have created a poetry-savvy audience in town." The festival will be held at Meet At 66 King East with an admission cost of $6 per event or a $30 all-inclusive passport to all events. A former social worker and avid runner, Pickersgill, who started writing poetry as a Grade 9 assignment, got the idea for the festival during one of his early morning runs. "Sometimes poetry and the scene around it can be seen as somewhat esoteric, a bunch of words written centuries ago in a part of Olde England. But as the audiences at our monthly readings have discovered, you might hear about strolling a Cobourg beach, breaking up with a lover on a Montreal subway, our troops fighting in Afghanistan, wolves killing a farmer's sheep, or the sun glancing across Rice Lake," he says. "For poetry to be vital to the people who read or listen to it, it has to speak in a familiar language, evoking emotions people can identify with." Organizers say the POW Festival is shaping up to be one of the major poetry events in Ontario. "We are in negotiation
with several of Canada's well-known poets to read at the festival,"
Pickersgill says, "and all indications are we will soon be able to
announce some major names that will be reading during the weekend. At
some point an event like this takes on a life of its own, becomes full
of potential, more than I ever thought I could make it. It'll be an exciting
weekend for Cobourg and the county." |