Vancouver Poetry House is presenting the 11th annual Verses Festival of Words from April 22 to May 1.

Canada’s largest alternative literary festival, Verses features spoken-word artists, poets, storytellers, singer-songwriters, and improvisers on various online stages.

Highlights of the festival include:

Hullabaloo (April 22-24). B.C.’s Youth Spoken Word Festival features workshops, showcase performances, and some of the province's finest high school-aged poets all sharing work for peers and audiences alike.

Talk the Talk: What is your ritual? (April 24). Vancouver Poetry House’s artistic director Joseph Dandurand shares what it is that he does before he drops the first word of a new poem.

Stage to Page (April 24). Industry professionals from poetry, publishing, and theatre form an all-star panel to workshop new poems by spoken-word artists. 

Poets Forward (April 26). Workshop with Isabella Wang encourages participants to consider issues of the dynamic world, and to discuss why poetry is political, is imaginative, and is activism.

Mashed Sabbath 50 (April 27). Nine poets will create new works in a spoken word and music mashup reimagining the songs from Black Sabbath's classic album Paranoid.

El Jones (April 28). Halifax poet, professor, and activist leads a free writing workshop to develop beginner, intermediate, and core skills in writing for page and stage.

CIPS Finals (May 1). To celebrate the close of Verses Festival of Words 2021, and National Poetry Month, the final round of the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam sees the top 10 competing spoken-word poets go head-to-head, followed by the top five poets. Nisha Patel and Andre Prefontaine are guest judges at the event, which is hosted by Johnny D Trinh.

For the complete Verses schedule look here.