oh the CFSW!!

So I know I've been really bad at keeping up with this blog lately. I promise I'll do better in the future. The Canadian Festival of Spoken Word occured between October 10-October 14 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When the plane landed, the landscape was exactly what I thought it would be: grey grey grey. Not to say that I think Halifax is ugly- no way. It kind of reminded me of Martha's Vineyard, stretched out to be a city, and drained of its color.

The CFSW itself raised many issues, and it was incredibly interesting to be an active listener. Basically, teams of slam poets, representing the best poets in their city, from all across canada gather at one city once a year to compete and exchange ideas. I feel that I need to emphasize that the competative aspect to this festival, although important, was not nearly as important as it would seem. In true poetic irony, the points at a poetry competition are not the point. The point is poetry. (I'll be saying that a lot this year). So although they were there to compete against eachother, the general feeling was a big family reunion, rather than a competition.

Some of the big questions that were raised included the responsibility of a poet, how to market spoken word to a more diverse crowd, the connection between spoken word and other art forms such as music and studio art.... Since I was not an active participant, I will be answering someof thse questions on my own in this blog in future posts.

After my first night in Halifax, I was promptly adopted by the Ottawa team, as "team american" (kinda like team mascot.... nevermind.) A wonderful inspirational group of poets, I found out that their team was entirely made of new poets (meaning no one on the team had ever attended the CFSW before). Partially guided and advised by Danielle Gregoire and John Akpata, it was clear that the Ottawa scene had much to offer and that as a documentarian it was my duty to follow them back to Ottawa and see them on their own turf. Which is exactly what I did.