April 2021 is National Poetry Month and as an arts organization, we love celebrating all art forms! While Hillside focuses on music, we also program other art forms—literature, spoken word, dance, visual art, comedy, and drama. The Sun Stage is where stories of growth, abundance, oppression, and acceptance are expressed and brought to light. Despite the pandemic, we were able to curate a virtual Sun Stage at Hillside Homeside 2020 where we welcomed wonderful poets like Sonnet L’Abbé and presented authors like Christa Couture in partnership with the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival.
The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival (EMWF) is holding a poetry showcase on April 8th, 2021 to celebrate and we invite you to join us. We spoke with Nicola Dufficy, Artistic Director at the EMWF, who says, “Canada has an incredibly vibrant, rich and diverse community of poets. We’re thrilled to present this showcase in partnership with The League of Canadian Poets during National Poetry Month. Join us as we celebrate the release of fifteen new poetry collections, and immerse yourself in the words of exciting new talents and well-known writers from all across the country.”
Presenters include Roxanna Bennett (The Untranslatable I), Selina Boan (Undoing Hours), Leanne Dunic (One and Half of You), Therese Estacion (Phantompains), Louise B. Halfe (awâsis — kinky and dishevelled), Steven Heighton (Selected Poems: 1983-2020), Dallas Hunt (Creeland), Larissa Lai (Iron Goddess of Mercy), Grace Lau (The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak), Jen Sookfong Lee (The Shadow List), Garry Thomas Morse (Scofflaw), Ken Norris (South China Sea), Arleen Paré (First), Rebecca Salazar (sulphurtongue), Ian Williams (Word Problems).