Featured Poets
This year’s poets of honour are d’byi young and Robert Priest. Catch them on Saturday night at the Poets of Honour Showcase right before the Slam Finals.
Robert Priest is a poet, playwright, song-writer, and novelist. He's written fifteen books of poetry and prose and has featured in festivals in Budapest, B.C., England, Australia, Sweden and of course Canada. He's created poetry videos and is known as Dr. Poetry for his stint in the CBC radio show Wordbeat. He's also a journalist who's been published in Toronto's NOW Magazine.
d’bi young is an afrikan-jamaican-canadian dubpoet, monodramatist and educator who is internationally recognized as a visionary, an innovator and a leader in the development of arts education; she is the published author of two collections of poetry, six plays and six dubpoetry albums. her profound new creative-performance methodology, called the sorplusi method, is making shock waves through the global arts community as a radical paradigm shift in artist training and practice. She has worked with theatre companies, universities, cultural organizations, social institutions and individual artists across north america, the caribbean, europe and africa. in 2008 she founded anitafrika! dub theatre in toronto canada and proceeded to design and facilitate two cost-free twelve-month national residencies for emerging artists. her own monodrama trilogy sankofa, featuring the plays blood.claat, benu, and word! sound! powah! toured extensively in 2010; playing to critical acclaim and garnering awards in canada, jamaica, england and south africa and is due to be published in 2011. she is the recipient of two dora mavor moore awards, the canadian km hunter theatre award, the toronto mayor’s arts council award and numerous best solo artist awards. having recently completed her first year-long international tour of her latest album wombanifesto, in december 2010, she is presently writing her premiere theoretical text on the sorplusi method and has founded the pan afrika performing arts institute (papai) – a cultural movement committed to the holistic development of continental and diasporic multi-disciplinary afrikan artists.
Featured Poets
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