“It’s been a magical couple of days,” said Jane Davidson last Friday, June 5, at the wrap-up of the Spoken Word Festival. She is usually to be found producing the Festival of the Written Arts (FOWA), but in this case she was a producer of a different kind of festival, one that involved the creative talents of poets and students.
The Spoken Word Festival held its inaugural run at the Rockwood Pavilion in Sechelt, opening Thursday evening with performances from local teens and their mentors.
In a joint initiative, FOWA and School District No. 46, along with community sponsors, invited five performance artists and mentors into the high schools and alternative learning programs starting last January where they would elicit story and speech from the students. The kids had learned well – learned from the best – and the works that were spoken, sung or prayed at the festival displayed a white hot intensity.
The Sechelt Language School opened the show on Thursday evening with a welcome song and some words in their language. Adelene da Soul Poet followed with a poem she had written especially because she was so impressed with the students. She also shared a little black history in B.C. when she described her grandmother’s establishment in Vancouver, “the first class diner at Vi’s Chicken and Steaks.”
Students from Elphin-stone Secondary interspersed their poetic view of the world with other nationally acclaimed performers such as the world slam poet champion Brendan McLeod, who gave a sincere tribute to a fallen comrade, the late Zaccheus Jackson Nyce. The talented slam/spoken word poet had also visited the schools to bring his special brand of performance to the kids.
“Look how many love you,” sang McLeod. “Look at all you’ve done.” Memories of Zaccheus permeated the talk from mentor and poet Jillian Christmas who said he would have been phenomenally proud to see all the students perform today.
Janet Marie Rogers, a Mohawk Tuscarora, spoke her truths, a poem about not fitting in, and she gave a powerful performance.
Valerie Mason-John, although not available for the festival, was the fifth poet who had been a mentor in the schools.
If the teachers were stars, the students also knew how to shine. As the festival continued into Friday daytime, students from the SPIDER program and Chatelech Secondary got up to give their speeches, their recitations and their composed-on-the-spot poetry. Themes ranged from the lighter to the intense: about calling fat people names, about a kid who wants to win at a music festival but who can’t play Chopsticks on the piano, about sisterly love, about rage, about how to live and love life.
Davidson closed the show by saying, “There’s lots of grief in our community right now. Events like these are so important.”
