Heart of the City Festival
We’d like to invite you to an event Thursdays Writing Collective is doing as part of the Heart of the City Festival.
It’s a reading of work by and related to the Downtown Eastside’s Bud Osborn, a poet and activist who died this May.
Here is a memory of Bud by Am Johal. Jean Swanson said this about Bud:
“He was a great voice for the Downtown Eastside and he said the words sometimes people couldn’t express themselves,” she recalled.
“And I’ve been in many meetings where Bud was reading a poem or speaking, and people were just spellbound, because they knew that what he was saying is what they wanted to say, and maybe couldn’t quite articulate it. But he also helped people articulate their own voice, and that was very important. He gave a lot of people the courage to speak out.”
“Speaking hope and possibility into situations of apparent impossibility,” she added, “that’s what he did.”
Thursdays Writing Collective members will read a selection of Bud’s writing interspersed with original poems of our own that speak to Bud’s work. The one hour event will begin with a short talk about Bud by poet Mariner Janes.
Here is the programming description in the festival guide:
Reading & Poetry
BUD OSBORN AND POEMS FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD Thursdays Writing Collective & Mariner Janes
Sunday November 2, 4:30pm – 5:30pm
InterUrban Gallery, 1 E. Hastings
Free
Poet Mariner Janes situates Bud Osborn’s life and poetry in the Downtown Eastside, to be followed by readings from Thursdays Writing Collective of new and published works from the neighbourhood Bud called home. Poet, writer, editor and East Vancouver resident, Mariner Janes works in the DTES and aims to bring the multitude of voices he finds here into his work, through found poetry, transcription and storytelling.
Thursdays Writing Collective is comprised of 150 activists, academics, slam poets, novelists and storytellers who explore issues of self-determination through creative writing. The Festival congratulates founder Elee Kraljii Gardiner and the Collective who, since 2008, continue to hold free, drop-in writing sessions at Carnegie, have published six chapbooks and perform at events throughout the city. For more info:www.thursdayswritingcollective.ca
And here is a piece on Bud in BC Bookworld that includes an interview.
We hope to see you!
If you can’t come to this, please check out the other fascinating events in the Festival – they are superb.
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