Marie Metaphor Specht is Victoria’s current Poet Laureate for 2023 to 2025. This honorary position celebrates literature and poetry in the capital city.
Specht is a spoken word poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work has been published in Oratorealis, Untethered Magazine, The Chestnut Review, The Hellebore and Room Magazine among others. She regularly performs at a wide variety of venues ranging from arts festivals to literary events and poetry slams.
Specht has collaborated with musicians, filmmakers and lighting technicians to create complex and interactive works. Her first full-length book of poetry, Soft Shelters, will be published with Write Bloody North in fall 2023.
“Poetry is a way of reaching towards each other; of closing the spaces between us,” says Specht. “I believe that creativity is our shared human birthright and any artform with an audience is a means to foster connections between people; an opportunity to see and hold each other in our complex histories of joy and suffering. This work is how we imagine a way forward; how we birth new worlds. Our communities flourish through intrepid acts of beauty, through the incredible power of stories shared.”
For more information about this program, or to contact the Poet Laureate, email culture@victoria.ca.
Poetry in Light Workshops + Performance
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City of Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht invites you to participate in Poetry in Light, two poetry writing workshops and a performance inspired by and performed with an upcoming interactive, sculptural lighting installation inside the Greater Victoria Public Library's sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch.
“The Poetry in Light workshops and performance will explore writing as an act of love and what it is to be human in a profoundly difficult yet terribly beautiful world – integrated with Love Begets Love, a sound reactive, sculptural art installation,” said Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht.
The Love Begets Love interactive artwork will be on display from November 27 to the end of April 2024.
Pre-Register Now
Pre-register to participate in one or both of the free poetry writing workshops (November 30 and December 7) led by Victoria Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht and attend the Poetry in Light performance on January 12, 2024.
UPDATE: The workshops and performance are now SOLD OUT. Wait lists are available through Eventbrite.
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Poetry in Light Workshop: Writing from the Heart Thursday, November 30, 5:30-7 p.m. Greater Victoria Public Library sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch, 385 Menzies Street
This free poetry writing workshop will encourage participants to dive deep into their own hearts and write what they find there. Humans are capable of simultaneously holding both the love and the mess — how can we write in a way that honours this duality? Up to 12 participants.
This workshop explores writing poetry for both the page and the stage and are suitable for ages 15 and up and any level of experience. Participants will have the opportunity but are not required to participate in the January 12 performance.
Participants should come prepared with a curious mind and paper and pencils/pens or a computer for writing.
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Poetry in Light Workshop: Love Letters for an Aching World Thursday, December 7, 5:30-7 p.m. Greater Victoria Public Library sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch, 385 Menzies Street
Poetry can be a lens that changes how we see the world. This free poetry writing workshop will explore writing as an act of love and explore what it is to be human in our complex world. Up to 12 participants.
This workshop explores writing poetry for both the page and the stage and are suitable for ages 15 and up and any level of experience. Participants will have the opportunity but are not required to participate in the January 12 performance.
Participants should come prepared with a curious mind and paper and pencils/pens or a computer for writing.
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Poetry in Light Performance Friday, January 12, 2024, 7-9 p.m. Greater Victoria Public Library sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch, 385 Menzies Street
Poet Laureate Marie Metaphor Specht invites you to a free evening of Poetry in Light where you’ll see live poetry translated into the language of light.
The sculptural installation Love Begets Love features heart-shaped lanterns that shift through a rainbow spectrum in reaction to each performer’s voice. Love Begets Love uses the Aurora system by Limbic Media to translate live sound to shifting patterns of light and colour.
Information will be available soon about the featured poets and spoken-word artists.
UPDATE: Sold out. Wait list available through Eventbrite.
Together, Gabrielle Odowichuck of Limbic Media and Marie Metaphor Specht aim to create dream-like spaces that inspire thoughtful contemplation and a sense of magic. Gabrielle is an artist-engineer developing sound-reactive lighting technologies to activate installations and performances. Marie is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, spoken word artist and the current Poet Laureate of Victoria. The combination of these skills and experiences has resulted in the deep exploration of light, form and visual metaphor. Their immersive installations are a physical manifestation of the conversations between these two creative minds and are a collaboration in the truest sense of the word.
Artist Statement
Love Begets Love is an immersive, sculptural light installation that uses gravity-defying forms and visual metaphors to whimsically describe the nature of loving human relationships. Love can be a lens that changes the very nature of how we see our world, just as a prism can break white light into the full spectrum of colour.
Love Begets Love's faceted heart lanterns use carefully engineered colour-changing light patterns to represent diverse networks of loving relationships. Coloured light travels through the prism heart-forms, just as love travels through a community. Love Begets Love is powered by Aurora software and can easily be switched from pre-programmed patterns to sound reactivity, allowing artists to perform with the installation and see their work translated live into responsive colourful lighting patterns.
John is an established poet and editor and was the City's fifth Poet Laureate. His 26 books, chapbooks, and anthologies include The Malahat at Fifty: Canada's Iconic Literary Journal (2017), Polari (2014), For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems (2012), and Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets (2007). Since 1980, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies on four continents have published his poems, essays, and reviews.
Yvonne Blomer was Victoria's fourth Poet Laureate from 2015-2018. Yvonne is an established poet, having published three collections of poetry and co-edited Poems from Planet Earth, an anthology from the Planet Earth Poetry reading series. Yvonne's work has twice been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and she has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English as well as in anthologies and literary journals in Canada, the UK and Japan. Yvonne’s recent collection of poems is As if a Raven.
Janet Rogers served as Victoria's Poet Laureate for three years. Her term ended on November 30, 2014. As Victoria's third Poet Laureate, Janet created opportunities for the community to come together in celebration of poetic voices on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people. Janet is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations band in southern Ontario. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and has been living on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people (Victoria, BC) since 1994. Janet works in the genres of poetry, spoken word performance poetry, video poetry and recorded poetry with music and script writing.
Local poet Linda Rogers served a three-year term as the City of Victoria's second Poet Laureate from December 1, 2008 to November 30, 2011. Linda Rogers is a poet, novelist, teacher and journalist who believes that celebration - the ritual integration of art, dance, music, and the spoken word - is essential to a community. Since most of her antecedents have been writers, lawyers or theologians, language is her natural medium.
Local poet, Carla Funk, was honoured to serve a two-and-a-half-year term as the City of Victoria's first Poet Laureate from June 2006 to November 30, 2008. During Carla Funk's term she participated in annual City of Victoria events and promoted poetry to Victoria neighbourhoods, schools and gathering places. Carla developed ideas to demonstrate that poetry is a primal, natural act - that it can heal, be funny, warm and moving, and accessible to the listener.
