Edmonton Poet/Writers Seeking Soldiers’, Families’ Words

A group of Edmonton-based artists, including Canada’s embedded war poet Suzanne Steele, is looking for the words of Canadian soldiers and their families for a new project – InArms.ca – as part of the Edmonton Poetry Festival:

In Arms is a multi-faceted project that invites contributions from Canadian Forces personnel, their families and friends. You don’t have to be a master poet or writer to contribute – you just have to be willing to tell your story in words.

We will feature some of your work on this website, and some of the work will make it into the print portion of the project – a chapbook (short book of poetry) to be published in late 2010. There’s also a live performance scheduled for November 2010 which will feature work written by you, delivered by a few of Edmonton’s finest poets.

Think you can’t write poetry? That it’s difficult or hard? Poems come in as many different shapes, sizes and forms as people do. All of them are equally valid. Some are traditional and rhymed, but they don’t have to be. All you are trying to do is to say something that matters to you in an interesting way, so it connects with others.

How to participate?

You can just write & share, get coached on writing or participate in a workshop – more on that here.

Think you can’t write poetry?

Here’s how simple it can be.

Any thoughts shared here via comments will be passed along as well.