Poetry to heal the world
Our collective poems and report from The Art of Change - Chapter 2: Words.
TLDR
❤️ We exceeded expectations for attendance, with a goal of 50 attendees and a real attendance of ~65 attendees! Some attendees were return guests from February, which was a sweet surprise!
💸 We’d initially expected to put on a bare-bones low budget event, but received generous support from the Youth Harbour, Patagonia Kitsilano, and
! This was exciting and gratifying, but also put pressure on us to deliver.⏳ With tight timelines for contracting performers and support, we leaned on the knowledge and expertise in our communities and were able to host an event we’re proud of.
🍎 We’re always finding ways to improve, and have many lessons from this event. These include (but are not limited to) contracting timelines, event time management, and prioritizing the participation of attendees.
As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.
- Audre Lorde in her essay “Poetry is not a Luxury”
On June 27th, we hosted The Art of Change, Chapter 2: Words at Patagonia Vancouver. We built on the success of our first-ever event in February, Chapter One: Sounds, to explore how poetry, spoken word, and creative writing could help us connect to climate action and our communities.
The event started with a beautiful land acknowledgement from Elder Mary Point. The event featured four poets from Vancouver Poetry House—Johnny MacRae, Tawahum Bige, Lindi Nolte, and Johnny D Trinh, who spoke about climate, home, nature, and political resistance. ASL interpretation of the poetry was available at the event, provided by Still Interpreting.
Our community poems
We envisioned a community event to explore what it means to navigate complex times through poetry and words. Our goal was to create a space for people to come together in community, become inspired, and feel empowered to express themselves in community. We wanted audience members to participate in a collective poetry workshop, and we worked with Vancouver Poetry House to design a facilitated activity where participants, in small groups, were asked to respond to a line provided by a poet facilitator. Here they are:
the mythical glacier lives only on labels
The world that is there without you
They say it exists only after you've written it down, but a piece of paper is not alive.
It grows and expands through cracks in ice, cool to the touch in my imagination
But if you go to the streams now
they're polluted with the greed of what the myths soldLong black veil flows to a place of the thinnest veil where we connect with spirit
The truths I knew contained in cultural memory
The extinct polar bear loved drinking coca cola while tigers shout “It's great” within cagesinitial prompt courtesy Johnny MacRae
She whispered, do you see it?
How could you? Like breath on a frozen day? She smirks, I feel it
Do you see the water crowding up around my bare feet in spaces that were once ruled by green
do you see your face in the sky? I do.
My son, 16 months old, has taught himself to sign “more”
Stop fucking breaking huckleberry branches to get to the berries!!!
To see true beauty is to reset
initial prompt courtesy Tawahum Bige
and if I die with dreams unfulfilled at least I will know on some blessed mornings of my life small birds with full bellies sang at my window
There is magic in the way the ocean waves kiss the shore I stand with the trees and know I'm not alone anymore
I've been twisted alive by time, and only love's nonsense will untangle me
the sea, the forest, holding what I can no longer carry on my human shoulders what can I provide in repayment?
if I die with dreams unfulfilled, at least I will know that the wave was woven with vibrant exuberance
at least I will have shared countless meals with friends that resemble family around a table with mismatched chairs that resemble being in our 20s at least my friends will know how deeply I love them
and if I die with dreams unfulfilled the beat of comparison's drum will be silenced as I arrive in peace with the realization that the journey itself is my home
and if I die with dreams unfulfilled at least I will know on some random Thursday in a Patagonia I sat with strangers who poured themselves onto paper and gave me their words to voice what else in life is there to rejoice.
initial prompt courtesy Lindi Nolte
Our community engagement process
Our goal was to embed community building in every aspect of our event. Here's how we tried to achieve this:
ensure that event presenters and artists represent local diversity and experiences
increase accessibility to event through no-cost attendance, an accessible venue, and ASL interpretation
designed a participative writing workshop
call-out to local leaders and community for volunteers
provided artists and volunteers with shared community meal before the event
Our project deliverables
Besides putting together our event, we committed to delivering the following outputs:
1. Photography
2. Report
3. Social Media Posts
4. Project Budget Report
5. Feedback from Participants
Our budget
Grants received
Vancouver Opera: $600
Youth Harbour FES: $5000
Patagonia Vancouver: Event space and set-up
Final spending
Honorarium (Organizers, Poets, Indigenous Land Acknowledgement and Elder Gift, Volunteers, ASL Interpretation, Event Photography) $4342
Travel $0
Equipment $0
Printing & Copying $151.53
Supplies (office supplies, seed paper) $211.74
Food $303.22
Other $0
TOTAL $5008.49
Notes on budget
Our initial budget was less than $1500, and relied heavily on donated time and volunteer contributions from our community. We generously received additional funding from Youth Harbour a few weeks before the event. We used these funds to increase our compensation to the artists and compensate our volunteers. The event would not have been possible without the generosity and support from Patagonia Vancouver, which donated in-kind the venue space, staff for set-up and set-down, as well as use of technical equipment.
With the support from Patagonia, we reallocated funds from the Travel and Equipment categories into Printing & Copying, Supplies, Food for Performers and Volunteers, and Honoraria. While the event was $8.49 over budget, we are not concerned with this overspend. We highly recommend Patagonia as an event space, as venue and equipment costs would otherwise have eaten up a large part of our event budget.
Challenges and learnings
Logistical coordination within timeline
As we only had a few weeks between confirmation of funding and the beginning of the event, it was a challenge to confirm the ASL interpreters and Indigenous Elder on short notice. While we are grateful to our friends that had existing relationships with interpreters and Elder Mary, we want to avoid high-pressure situations that exert colonial time pressure on valued members of our community. For future events, we will set clearer deadlines for contracting external support.Alignment with values
We had initially planned to work with a talented non-local artist, but after meeting with them we realized that we would like to prioritize artists from our local community. This decision, however difficult, was the right choice. It created time pressure While this ultimately was the right, however difficult, choice, it did create time pressure between thoughtfully contracting artists and the date we’d reserved our venue. However, we partially resolved this tension by reaching out to Vancouver Poetry House, who had existing relationships with local artists. Moving forwards, we will aim to build in more time for proper outreach, consultation, as well as our scan of local artists.Facilitation and time management
Due to time overruns, we did not have enough time as expected for our community poetry section. The poetry performances accounted for 60 minutes of the evening, with the collaborative poetry workshop and reading only having 20-30 minutes. Moving forward, we will be more transparent and clear with communication around the timeline, including managing late arrivals and incorporating more buffer time in the event schedule. To allow for more collaborative time between participants, we will aim for a 2:3 time performance-to-dialogue ratio. While all the artists had wonderful performances during the 60-minute performance time, shortening the presentation and lengthening the collaborative section will give attendees more time to participate.
Final reflection
Our second event in the series brought new challenges as well as exciting opportunities to partner with more community organizations than before!
From our exit survey, we received valuable feedback from participants for better timekeeping and to prioritize more time for the workshop. And we learned from our past event too: this time we better supported our volunteers by onboarding before the event, and had a much better room layout.
We are so grateful to our participants, to our volunteers, to our sponsors, and to our friends and family for making this event possible.
With love,
Victor (on behalf of everyone at Sword Fern Collective)
Made possible with support from The Youth Harbour, Patagonia Kitsilano, and
.Special thanks to Vancouver Poetry House, Reusables, Still Interpreting, Danielle Campani Photography, Sayemin, Dasha, Noel, Mackenzie, Geo, Khushi, and Estelle.