Sunday, May 20, 2018

Arc Poetry Walks : Ottawa : 2018

Arc Poetry Magazine approached me (thanks to a generous grant from the Community Foundation) to curate a series of literary walks around various neighbourhoods in Ottawa in 2018, each one to take roughly an hour, aiming to point out a variety of poetry-related sites around the city. As their own promo read:
Arc Walks Ottawa is a series of guided walks based on poetry themes and capitalizing on the rich poetry history of Canada’s capital. Residents and visitors alike are welcome to join in on the walks to learn and revel in Ottawa’s poetry.
The original pitch for the walk included one in French, as well as an Aboriginal walk, which are still in-progress. After each of my four walks, I posted the text from my walk over at my blog, with photos and plenty of links to the multitude of names and other references made during each walk. above/ground press has also produced "poem" handouts for each of my walks, with the produced poem and/or poet directly connected to that individual walk. The links to all are below, as will be notifications for further walks, as they become confirmed.

Walk One: Centretown, March 21, 2018: announcement; poem handout, by John Newlove; post-walk text and report

Walk Two: Glebe, May 25, 2018: announcement; poem handout, by Emily Baird; post-walk text and report

Walk Five: Hintonburg, November 9, 2018: announcement; poem handout, by Claire Farley; post-walk text and report

Walk Six: Byward Market, December 8, 2018: announcement; poem handout, by Colin Morton; post-walk text and report