Versefest: Day 3

Versefest seems to be running somewhere around 100 people or more per day at the events. The door attendants seem to have their work at each event to direct people to the one or two open seats still left.

There are tickets at the door but the majority seem to be seated by time I ever get there. (Early bird catches the word.)

It’s nice to see some people stay regardless if it’s slam or music. It’s good to see performers come out when it’s not even their day to perform. Each day there are a several of those. It seems good sportsmanship and to be interest in community and in the field to not fly in and fly out without seeing who all is about.

Barry McKinnon, who reads on Sunday, was in to see Fred Wah and Roo Borson last night.

The host of the Ottawa Youth Slam was encouraging the audience that they all should stand up. (The tallest head was the first to his feet.)

This is a participatory sport, he was saying. Get on your feet, stomp and whatnot as if it were a sports game. (That was at Versefest March 1.) A slam isn’t a kind of poetry. Poetry may be storytelling, rap, dub, mixing song and spoken word, dramatic monologue, or literary-device-ful of metaphors that some think of as more at home on the page. The point of slam is to grab the audience by whatever means you are best skilled at and elicit as response. No dead-fish-handshake equivalents.

Meanwhile the youth team waits in the wings to go on. The Ottawa team won the national competition.

Earlier on, Monty gave an intro to the Arc night readers. What happened after that? I’ve got more over at Humanyms.

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