The Calgary Spoken Word Festival is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 festival which promotes spoken word

Spoken word

Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....

. Spoken word draws heavily on the oral tradition and encompasses such genres as jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, dub

Dub music

Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...

, hip-hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

, folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, slam and storytelling

Storytelling

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values...

 poets or poetry. The festival was founded in 2004 in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

 by local artist Sheri-D Wilson

Sheri-D Wilson

Sheri-D Wilson is a Canadian poet and playwright.Sheri-D Wilson has written seven collections of poetry; her most recent, Autopsy of a Turvy World , was launched in April 2008. Her last collection, Re:Zoom , won the 2006 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the CanLit...

.

The first annual festival took place in the months July and August 2004, featuring such artists as Diane Di Prima

Diane di Prima

Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, Lillian Allen

Lillian Allen

Lillian Allen is a Canadian dub poet, reggae musician, writer and Juno award winner.-Biography:Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1951, she left that country in 1969, first moving to New York City, where she studied English at the City University of New York...

, Lorna Crozier

Lorna Crozier

Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet and holds the Head Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria....

, Dwayne Morgan

Dwayne Morgan

Dwayne Morgan is a Canadian spoken word artist, motivational speaker and event organizer based in Toronto, Ontario.Morgan began his career as a spoken word artist in 1993. He is the founder of Up From The Roots Entertainment, which was established in 1994 to promote the positive artistic...

, Ivan E. Coyote and George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke, OC is a Canadian poet and playwright. His work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the Black Canadian community of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that Clarke refers to as "Africadia".-Life:Born to William and Geraldine...

. Currently the festival takes place every year during the months of March and/or April.

2011 Calgary Spoken Word Festival

March 29 – April 16 Calgary

External links

• Calgary Spoken Word Festival homepage