The Mile End Poets’ Festival is a multidisciplinary arts festival focusing on literature in performance. Its goal was to present in a single local festival a range of the exciting artistic activity regularly taking place in and around Montreal’s Mile End district. The district is home to a huge number of poets, musicians, writers, dancers and performers. The festival was founded in 2010 by Montrea
l poet, performer and curator Ian Ferrier, with help from writer/performers Moe Clark and Kaie Kellough. It presented four nights of programming, each curated by a different artist or poet from the Mile End. This has been the model ever since. The festival now regularly receives much needed support from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Writers’ Federation. It presents work from multiple artistic communities with links to work by First Nations, literary and performance poetry artists, contemporary dancers, top artists from the city and elsewhere in Canada, and musicians who both tour internationally and regularly work in the neighbourhood’s exciting performance venues. In 2017, the Festival will be co ordinated by Ian Ferrier and Rachel McCrum. For tourists and those interested in the arts coming out of this intense Montreal district, the festival is a one-stop-shop where you might see a range of poetry, story, music and dance in a single evening. Shows typically have taken place at the Casa del Popolo and Sala Rossa on boulevard St Laurent, and at Café Resonance, and Mainline Theatre. Watch this space for the 2017 Mile End Poets' Festival Programme - Sunday 26th March - Tuesday 4th April. Launching soon!
