April is National Poetry month, and a new CBC digital series will look to showcase poets from the national capital region.
The new series, broadcast on Instagram, will feature poets reading their work and speaking about the things that inspire and uplift them. The first installment will feature spoken word poet Khaleefa ‘Apollo the Child’ Hamdan, who splits his time between writing and working in a group home for people with disabilities, and Courtney Symons, who doubles as a writer at Shopify and is currently pursuing a project called ‘100 Days of Connections’, featuring a new illustrated poem every day. They will be reading their poems ‘Winds of Change’ and ‘The Seasons of Your Life’ respectively.
The second installment will see performances of Ben Ladouceur’s poem ‘Wanting It Darker’, written in 2016 as a tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Mia Morgan’s topical ‘In the Rubble of this World, We are All Making Bread’. Poets and other local writers often promote their works through public events like readings and festivals like the annual Versefest and Laureate City, sometimes promoted through poster printing. Online outreach like the CBC series is also effective, particularly in the age of social distancing.
CBC Ottawa will premiere the first edition of the poetry series on its Instagram page on April 20, with the second coming a week later.
