New Spoken Word Community in Fredericton

One evening in mid-February, the Cinnamon Café in downtown Fredericton was overrun with poets. The occasion was a Spoken Word Poetry Night, and while poetry events are normally notorious for drawing small crowds, the King Street café quickly ran out of seating.

“We had to borrow chairs from the church next door,” explains Cassidy Ingersoll, who organized the event. A poet herself, Ingersoll is currently working on her first manuscript, but admits that she hasn’t shared much of her writing yet. The spoken word night was one of her first ventures into the Fredericton writing community: “I got into spoken word over the last year, and thought it would be interesting to hear other local writers’ takes on it.”

photo credit: Tom Stanley

The night of the event, there was no shortage of local writers. While eight poets had registered in advance to perform, others added their names as the evening proceeded; Ingersoll estimates that somewhere between twenty and twenty-five poets shared the mic, with some reading multiple poems, or returning to read more than once. “I really planned out this first reading, just so it wouldn’t be a bust,” says Ingersoll, who had the initial eight readers on a paper schedule. “But I did want more of an open mic style, which it did turn into, and that was fantastic.”

Asked to describe some the night’s readers, Ingersoll notes that there was a significant range of age groups: “some writers were in their 40s and 50s, and others were 18, maybe 19 to 22. The younger poets were a bit shyer, and were maybe just there to feel it out, at first, but once the older group got started, the younger ones got inspired. People were going up who hadn’t prepared anything to read, and either improvising, or going from poems they’d started to memorize.”

After the event, Ingersoll was approached by Hayden Wheeler, one of the evening’s performers, who proposed starting an online group for attendees and other local writers to network. The open group Wheeler created, titled the “Fredericton Poetry Scene,” can be found and joined on Facebook. Though it currently only has forty-six members, she aims to expand it into a hub for news about literary and spoken word readings and workshops in Fredericton.

Ingersoll hopes to make the Spoken Word Poetry Night a recurring event. Though a larger venue might be ideal, given the surge of interest at the first reading, she specifies that she would prefer to avoid using a bar venue, so as not to exclude younger, under-19 poets.

Part of the success of the event, she explains, was that it brought out a crowd of writers who tend to feel excluded by on-campus or university-organized literary events. “It’s hard to hear about what’s going on when you aren’t regularly on campus, and if you aren’t a student, it sometimes feels like you might not be welcome there,” she admits, referring to events such as the University of New Brunswick’s annual reading series and student-organized Qwerty Reads, and St. Thomas University’s Stand and Deliver.

Ingersoll’s goal is to create an ongoing, off-campus poetry series that will help to integrate the various writing communities in Fredericton. “We wanted to do this first night just to see if there was any interest at all, and there was so much more than we could have expected,” she says. “I kept thinking how I didn’t know any of these people, but it was great to see so many writers in one place, all interested in sharing the same thing.”

Rebecca Salazar
Editorial Assistant

The UNB Reading Series Presents The Fiddlehead Poetry Editors

The University of New Brunswick would like to invite you to hear a poetry reading by the Poetry Editors of The Fiddlehead: Phillip Crymble, Claire Kelly, and Ian LeTourneau. 

Phillip Crymble’s poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, The Malahat Review, CV2, The Literary Review of Canada, The New Quarterly, Vallum, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere.  Born in Belfast, N. Ireland, he holds a MFA from the University of Michigan, and is currently pursuing a PhD in American Literature at the University of New Brunswick.  Not Even Laughter, his first full-length collection, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, in 2015.

Claire Kelly writes and lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She has had poems published in The Malahat Review, Prism International, and has poems in upcoming issues of CV2 and Prairie Fire. Her first chapbook, Ur-Moth, was published by Frog Hollow Press in 2014. She is on the poetry board of Goose Lane Edition's Ice House Imprint.

Ian LeTourneau is the author of the chapbook Defining Range (Gaspereau, 2006) and the full-length collection Terminal Moraine (Thistledown, 2008). His poems and reviews have appeared in Arc, The Malahat Review, Event, Books in Canada, and many others.

Their poetry readings will be held Thursday, February 19th at 8:00pm in the East Gallery of Memorial Hall on the UNB Fredericton Campus. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend!

Poetry Co-editor Phillip Crymble Takes Poetry to City Hall

Photo courtesy of City of Fredericton

This past Monday at Fredericton's city council meeting, The Fiddlehead's poetry co-editor Phillip Crymble was introduced as Fredericton's first poet laureate, a position that coincides with national poetry month.

Mayor Woodside welcomed Crymble by saying, "We're really pleased about two things: number one, you're living with us, and selected to call Fredericton home, and second, that you're here tonight to enlighten us."

Part of his role will be to read a commissioned poem to be read at the next council meeting on April 28.

Earlier in the day, Crymble was interviewed by Christine McLean on CBC Fredericton's information morning. Listen to the podcast here.