Voices of Venus 4th Birthday Party and Grand Finale ft Klayani Pandya and Pearl Pirie

Hello everybody!

This Wednesday, May 8th, marks VoV’s 4th birthday and will also wrap up four years of monthly shows.

Come for the Open Mic
Stay for the Features
And Also the Cupcakes

Join us for birthday cupcakes, bring your own stories and poems to our all-women open mic, and enjoy feature performances by poetry scene veteran Pearl Pirie and up-and-coming story-teller Kalyani Pandya. Let’s take things out with a bang!

Final Instalment of VoV’s Monthly Showcase

So, as you know, next month marks VoV’s fourth anniversary.
 
To mark the occasion, our show will include multiple feature performers and, of course, cupcakes for all to enjoy. Partly this is to celebrate four years of women’s live lit and spoken word in Ottawa; but it’s also a farewell party that will take us out with a bang.
 
Next month’s show, May 8th, will be VoV’s final instalment as a monthly showcase.
While Voices of Venus will continue to run Special Presentations as and when we have the opportunity to do so, I can no-longer financially support this showcase and, thus, it’s time for me to move on to other adventures.
 
You all, of course, have been utterly wonderful, and I absolutely treasure what we’ve made together.
 
Thank you.

Upcoming Events – April 2013

Thursday, April 18^th

Ottawa Storytellers’ Speaking Out, Speaking In series presents: “Granddaughters Speak” ft Marta Singh and Sherri Yazdani

NAC Fourth Stage

7:30pm

Tickets: $20 at the NAC Box Office

 

Sunday, April 21^st

Dusty Owl presents Sonia Saikaley and Alexis Kienlen

Mugshots Bar (75 Nicholas Street, in the Old Jail)

3pm

PWYC

 

Tuesday, April 23^rd

Tree Reading Series presents:

A Round Table editing session with John Steffler (6:45pm)

AND

A feature performance by Mary Dalton (8pm)

Arts Court Library

PWYC

 

Friday April 26^th

Ottawa International Writers’ Festival presents:

“Writing your Life” with (VoV alumna) Amber Dawn, Iain Reid, and Miriam Katin (6:30pm)

“Every Happy Family” ft Cathy Marie Buchanan, Saleema Nawaz, and Shyam Selvadurai (8:30pm)

Knox Presbyterian Church

$15 per show (online or at the door)

The Spring Edition of Writers’ Fest is ongoing – running from April 10^th to May 13^th – and more information can be found at www.writersfestival.org.

 

Saturday April 27^th

Ivan Coyote and Taqralik Partridge (!!!) as part of Northern Scene

Knox Presbyterian Church

8:30pm

Tickets – $12 online, at the NAC box office, or at the door. You can also get in with a Writers’ Fest pass.

Northern Scene runs from April 25^th to May 4^th and includes 250 artists from Yukon, North West Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut. You can find more information on performers and performances at http://nac-cna.ca/en/northernscene.

 

Saturday April 27 AND Sunday April 28^th

Plan 99 in conjunction with Writers’ Fest present:

Tamas Dobozy & Elisabeth de Mariaffi (27th)
David Seymour, Rona Shaffran & Stephanie Bolster (28^th)

Manx Pub

5pm

Free

Voices of Venus ft Amanda Earl

 
Amanda Earl is an Ottawa Poetry dynamo. She has no less than seven chapbooks to her name, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, most recently including: Rampike 19.2, the Cultural Mischief Issue; PRECIPICe, Volume 3; and Dusie 10.
She has been the managing editor for Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal for ten years; and also runs AngelHousePress through-which she publishes the Experiment-O annual e-magazine.
Amanda has performed on numerous stages around the city, including Tree, VERSeFest, and – back in 2009 – VoV’s very first show.
Tonight, she’s bringing us an erotically charged set featuring both poetry and prose. Do come out and join us.

Trobairitz (Catherine Owen) – Poetry Squee. :-)

So. While I was at VERSeFest, I picked up Catherine Owen’s latest poetry collection, Trobairitz, about-which I will now squee at length.
 

Book Cover – Trobairitz (Catherine Owen) The author, bespiked and with black hair flying, wailing on her bass. Yes.

 
Me being me, perhaps its no surprise that I saw the cover and had to at least check it out.
I pulled it off the merch table, and checked the description on the back cover:
Twenty-first century metalheads; twelfth century troubadours and their female counterparts, the trobairitz—what could they possibly have in common? The creation of an often misunderstood and at times reviled genre for one; for another, a kin preoccupation with the questioning of structures set up by class, gender, and religion.
So far, so good. That she got a blurb from Kate Braid (one of my favourite poets – you can listen to some of her poetry here) didn’t hurt, either.
But it was the random sellection – open the book at a random page, and see what’s there – that sold it for me.
I landed on a poem called “Metal Show” – a piece which, the next night, she performed in a spitfire style that would be at home on local slam stages – my heart sundered by the opening words “Tribe is what they are”. So, too, for Tribute (dedicated to RJ Dio), and for Plazer 3, for the Canso of As It Is, for the way she takes old forms and builds them into new situations, reforges those links between one rebelious, heretical musical tradition and another.
 
I’m biased, I know. I love the subject matter. Love metal, love music history, love this history of women’s voices, too. It’s my kind of book.
If it sounds like your kind of book, I recommend that you check it out, too.
 
 
TTFN,
A.

VERSeFest 2013! :-D

So, as you all know, VERSeFest 2013 kicks off TONIGHT with a contingent of poets from Australia, among numerous others.
 
But I’m not here to talk about that.
 
I am, of course, tipping you all off about tomorrow’s 7pm show, Music In/Fusion ft Luna Allison and Lady Katalyst and present by yours truly, VoV.
 
 

Join us at Knox Presbyterian Church (Elgin at Lisgar) on Wednesday, March 13th at 7pm! $10 at the door or through versefest.ca

 
 
A bit about Luna:
Luna Allison is by turns a page poet, spoken word artist, playwright, journalist, singer and actor. She has been featured in numerous literary and spoken word series, festivals and venues across North America and heard on CBC Radio. Her award-winning first play, Falling Open, has been featured at the Ottawa Fringe, the Montreal Fringe and The Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Undercurrents Festival. Luna is currently working on a new play about sin and friendship, along with a collection of poems about patience called The Waiting Room.
 
 
A bit about Kat:
Lady Katalyst is a poet & hiphop artist based in Montreal, Canada, who has been performing as a solo artist and with the Kalmunity Vibe Collective for over ten years in Montreal and throughout parts of Canada. Her styles range from Hiphop to Spoken word to Jazz-infused melodic flows, and her work conveys real life situations through lyrical storytelling. Her philosophy as an artist is to always push towards the unknown and to live outside of her comfort zone in order to create what’s next. Her work has been published in ‘The Talking Book’. Her debut album, “Souliloquies”, brings words spoken, songs sung and raps flowed; blurring the lines between musical genres like hiphop, jazz, blues, reggae and soul.
 
 
Tickets are available online or at the door.
 
Come out and join us for an unforgetable evening!
 
 
TTFN,
A.

Upcoming Events – February 2013

Hey folks,
Thanks for making tonights show – complete with unexpected last-minute venue change – a success. It was wonderful to see you all out.
How many of you have gone home hunting mangoes, after hearing Jackie’s poem?
 
Below is just a smattering of the spoken word and live lit events happening in Ottawa during the second half of February. Please do check them out.
 
 

Friday, Feb 15th

 
Dusty Owl presents “Senior Love Poetry” (a fundraiser for VERSeFest – there will be goofy prizes)
Mug Shots – pub in the Jail House Hostel
9pm
PWYC
 
 

Saturday, Feb 16th

 
Ottawa Storytellers’ Speaking Out Speaking In present “Beyond the Underground Railroad – Black History in Canada” ft Ruthanne Edward and Greg Frankson
7:30pm
Tickets are $25.50 at the NAC Box Office
 
 

Sunday Feb 17th

 
Dusty Owl presents a fundraiser for the Black Youth Conference, ft Jacqueline Lawrence & John Akpata
Mug Shots – pub in the Jail House Hostel
3pm
PWYC
 
AB Series presents Luna Allison and evalyn parry
Raw Sugar
7:30
$12
 
 

Sunday, February 24th

 
Words of a Poet – Vol. IV ft Raliq Bashard, Komi Olaf, Ikenna Onyegbula, Hodan Ibrahim, Brandon Wint, Ragaeeb, Synonymous, and Ibn Najeeb
Ottawa Little Theatre
7pm
Cost Unknown
 
 

Tuesday, February 26th

 
Tree Reading Series presents:
6:45pm – Tree Seeds workshop: Playing with Constraints with Gwynn Scheltema
8pm – Show ft Monty Reid & Nina Berkhout
Arts Court Library
PWYC
 
Ottawa Story Tellers’ Stories and Tea presents “Tailored Tales: Clothes encounters of the woven kind” ft. Nicole Lavigne and Phil Nagy
Tea Party Café (119 York St)
7pm
$8/PWYC
 
 

NOTE: Next Month VoV will be at Knox Church (Elgin at Lisgar) because it’s VERSeFest Time! We will be featuring Luna Allison and Lady Katalyst, and the show will begin at 7pm. Tickets are $10 OR attend both of that evening’s shows for $15.

 
 
TTFN, and see you next month at VERSeFest,
A.