Spring Pulse Poetry Festival

The Drummond Cairn- The fireplace from the Drummond home now sits in a place of honour beside the Cobalt Public Library

Next year's Spring Pulse Poetry Festival will be held May 9-12 2012 .

At our first Poetry Festival, we gave our first Lifetime Achievement Award to Douglas Pollard owner of the Highway Book Shop, Cobalt.

We were a bit ahead of the curve. Dec 31, 2008 Mr Pollard learned he was in the most recent list of new inductees to the Order of Canada. Our congratulations (again) go to Mr. Pollard for a life well-lived.

In other news this year, as a response to the successful Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in early April 2008, the Town of Cobalt declared Cobalt to be the "Poetry Capital of the North."

The Poetry Map of Canada features our Poet Laureate of Cobalt, giving us a large red dot in the northern part of Ontario.

The fourth annual spring pulse poetry festival had another successful season. Spring Pulse Poetry Festival is the largest poetry/arts festival in Northeastern Ontario and featured 24 events from May 7-14. We found new homes for poetry in our community and touched many with entertaining story poems. Old friends shared memories and new ones were born. From the Temiskaming Hospital, to senior homes, Extendicare, Miners Tavern poetry park benefit concert with Headframe and friends, Classic theatre mezzanine Poetic Visions 1V, Orange Pear Café, Cobalt, New Liskeard/ Haileybury libraries, League of Canadian Poets in school programme with Kate Marshall Flaherty ( elementary and secondary schools), community pot luck Golden Age Club Cobalt, Ron Nigrini/Jake Thomas folk’ blues concert Classic theatre, and the newest cultural tourism site the Dr. Pollard Poetry Park. Poetry, Music, and the Visual Arts blended and bonded with enraptured and inspired audiences. Attendance was up at most events and the quality of performers exceeded expectations. Our local multi-talented artists took their talents into the public domain and shone. As a friend commented;” I have been stricken with the C word (creativity)”
The dedication ceremony for the Dr. Pollard Poetry Park in Cobalt was historic. It was the first major public legacy recognition of Dr. Pollard Order of Canada recipient. Today it is Canada’s most historic community poetry park and unique to the north. It is a sanctuary for the past where local poets Dave Mac Laren, John Gore, new inductee Muriel E. Newton-White along with famous honourary inductees Dr. William Henry Drummond and Archibald Lampman receive legendary recognition.

Schedule Printable Calendar