VERSeFest is Ottawa’s annual international poetry festival.  It is managed by a collective of Ottawa poetry groups called VERSe Ottawa.  The festival is going into its third year and has been a great artistic success.  Last year’s festival brought spoken word poets of the calibre of C.R. Avery and Ursula Rucker, and written word poets such as Philip Levine and Rae Armantrout.  We’re looking forward to VERSeFest ’13, which will feature poets from Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands.  The festival promises to be even better than its predecessors.  But we need your help.

Staging an international poetry festival is a much more expensive operation than ‘keeping it Canadian’.  Travel costs are very much higher, as you might imagine; even the costs of accommodation and hospitality rise above those for Canadian nationals.  We have sought and obtained some funding from several Canadian funding agencies, but it isn’t enough to offset costs.

We need $5,000 to break even on VERSeFest ’13.  If we don’t manage to raise that amount, we will have to start cancelling international and Canadian poets.  We need $2,500 to bring two Irish and three Dutch poets to Ottawa, and we need $1,500 to bring Canadian poets from western Canada.  A further $1,000 will go toward accommodations and hospitality for other festival participants. 

Your contributions will go directly to funding the artists’ appearances.  VERSeFest is run completely by volunteers, so 100% of every donation goes toward making the festival happen.  Please give what you can.

You can help even if you can’t contribute financially.  Please pass the word about our campaign to friends and acquaintances.  Make some noise about VERSeFest and Indiegogo.  Use the Indiegogo share tools to get the word out.

Thank you!