SPOKEN Word That’s Louder Than a Bomb in Hamilton Friday

The city of Hamilton lies just to the west of the Greater Toronto Area. Recently there has been a surging of interest in spoken word, and a few people have been quietly looking at opportunities to expand the art form’s presence in the local arts community.

One of the products of this effort is the event coming this Friday at 7pm. The Burlington Slam Project and the Factory Hamilton Media Centre will present SPOKEN, an interarts performance, and a feature screening of the youth poetry slam documentary Louder Than a Bomb. The show is curated by Waterdown-based multidisciplinary theatre artist and spoken word organizer Nea Reid.

At SPOKEN, Cytopoetics founder Greg Frankson aka Ritallin will give poetic responses to the 1999 Unite Against Racism campaign by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation — one of the largest and most diverse anti-racism campaign of its kind in Canadian history. Ritallin will respond to four of the videos created featuring poets Jemeni, Walter Borden and Dwayne Morgan, commenting on the retrospective and present-day relevance of the campaign. SPOKEN will also feature photography by Michelle Darby, the artistic director of PENTA (Poets Engaging and Networking Through the Arts), an interdisciplinary collaboration of artists working to exhibit and showcase the works of musicians, poets, graffiti artists, photographers, dancers and more.

The poetry will be followed by a screening of Louder Than a Bomb, the documentary on the youth poetry slam event of the same name in Chicago — the largest youth poetry slam in the world. The film chronicles the stereotype-confounding stories of four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa.

The Factory Hamilton Media Centre is located at 228 James Street North. The event is free. The night will be unforgettable.