Stroll of Poets Society

The Stroll of Poets board of directors and the Haven committee would like to express our appreciation to all members of the Stroll who signed up to read, mic host, and/or door host during our Haven Reading Series 2022 – 2023 season.

The return to in-person gatherings was a bit of a gamble and a big change from the past couple of seasons where readings were held online. Thanks to all of you for your response to this pivot.

While we were able to meet again with our friends and fellow poets to listen to so many entertaining readings, it was a terrific year with a remarkable conclusion. Attendance was high throughout the year, and Fresh Verse was exciting and an enjoyable note for every one to end on.

A round of applause goes out to our Haven committee members who worked diligently to ensure that the season ran with very few glitches:

• John Leppard
• Janis Dow-Durnin
• Naomi McIlwraith
• Loren Marsden
• Anne Gerard Marshall
• Max Vandersteen

See you all again in September!

The Stroll of Poets is proud to offer another version of Fresh Verse at our Haven Reading series at The Upper Crust Café on May 1st, 2023.

Come out to see some new faces, hear some new voices, and appreciate fresh verses presented by four of Edmonton’s emerging young poets, Tyler De Wacht, Grey Johnson, Paityn Reynolds and Jesse Piquette, as well as members of the Edmonton Spoken Word Youth Choir.

The Stroll of Poets is honoured to promote young voices in order to encourage youth to create poetry such as these powerful words borrowed and adapted from this 2013 poem by JBWELL3:

I Speak   I Write   I Live

     By JBWELL3

From the internal core of my youth I release a world of bright hope
From my hands, flowing streams of smooth syllables nourish barren souls

This is why I speak… I write… I live

Ancestral chains binding free spirits of orators and writers past
Who spoke hope with eagle soaring songs
While their sweat, tears, and blood reveal their personal stories

This is why I speak… I write… I live

While gasping breaths spoke of the future being just a whisper away
And silence being the empty pages for me and my generation
To write our story

This is why I speak… I write… I live

With our voice, we will emancipate the captive
With the pen, we will cut chains of history
With our lives, we will toil the earth…
Fighting through slashes of statistical whips
Breaking ropes of restricted inferiority
And project a roar of change…

And even if my voice should be reduced to a whisper or temporary silence
May the scars of my life, the blood sweat and tears of my heart.
Remain the legend we leave to the next generation

For when my voice and hands cease to speak… may my recorded legacy
Water the seed for new and better change upon the story of another
That will birth even greater change… For this reason

This is why I speak… I write…. I live.

We need say no more
Just $5 at the door
If you want to hear more…

Sunday, April 23, 2023
6:30 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm
The Aviary, 9314 – 111 Avenue N.W.
Free

WHAT ARE THE BLINKS ?

It’s Edmonton’s own feat of poetic engineering, a sleek sparkplug of words, a poem delivered in—gasp—less than 30 seconds. After you sign up, prepare your own 30 second poem – rhyme, rap or haiku.

This event is a co-presentation by The Edmonton Poetry Festival and The Stroll of Poets

The Stroll of Poets has been approached to participate in a reading celebrating Poetry Month at Spirit of Hope United Church. If you would like to participate by sharing your poems, preferably broadly themed around Community, The importance of Community, or even Edmonton Community builders, please contact the Stroll at strollquestions@gmail.com or Max at maxvandersteen@shaw.ca to have your name included in this event.

Or you could just attend and sign up for the open mic at the door.

See below for further details.

Stroll members 55+ are invited to submit poems to be shared at the launch of Seniors Week on June 5th. Selected poems will appear in a special chapbook published for the occasion, and two poets will be invited to read their poems at the City Hall celebration. Deadline to submit is April 30th.

The Stroll is partnering with Age Friendly Edmonton to get the word out. Let’s show them how our members’ words from experience can inspire, entertain and inform this city.