Every year, we get together a bunch of poets and a musician, and we canoe from town to town along the Grand River in southwestern Ontario for a week in the summer. We canoe all day, arrive at the next town the Grand runs through, give a performance there along with a local author, then head to our campsite and rest our paddle-weary bones. Then we get up the next day and do it all again.
People get to hear some fine work from Canadian poets who have a new book to read from. We all get to hear some great music. And all thanks to the country’s oldest communication system: the river.
People get to hear some fine work from Canadian poets who have a new book to read from. We all get to hear some great music. And all thanks to the country’s oldest communication system: the river.
HOW DID THIS GET STARTED?
We noticed that most author tours bring writers to the big cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, and Halifax. People in smaller towns have to drive into the city if they want to hear what Canada’s poets are up to.
We wanted to bring contemporary Canadian poetry out into small towns and rural communities. And we wanted to do it in a way that would make poetry feel like something people can relate to. And something that seemed like fun.
At first we thought we would ride horses from town to town, and call ourselves the Royal Canadian Mounted Poets (RCMP). Then we figured since we don’t know how to ride horses, don’t own horses, and would probably break all our bones on our way to the readings, that was probably a bad idea.
Then we thought of the perfect unconventional tour vehicle: the canoe.
For riverside towns, the water is a huge part of the life of the community. Travelling along a river seemed like an ideal way to get to know a region rather than just parachuting in for a reading, talking about ourselves and our work, and then taking off.
We chose the Grand River in southwestern Ontario. The Grand is a beautiful river with tonnes of herons, turtles, wildflowers, and spots to camp along its shores. It flows 300 kilometres from the highlands of Dufferin County to Port Maitland, where it empties into Lake Erie. It’s also a river that connects a whole string of small and medium-sized towns where we found fantastic local organizations willing to partner with us to set up some evenings for poetry and music.
We also found possibly the greatest canoe company in the world: Treks in the Wild, a Brantford-based outdoor outfitter run by Andy Tonkin. We called Andy out of the blue and said, “We’re thinking of taking eight poets on a reading tour of the Grand River but we don’t have any canoes. Would you like to help us?”
Now Andy not only lends us as many canoes as we need every year, free of charge, but he and his wife Val shuttle us around in their van, show us paddling tricks that keep us from drowning, and have taught us how to make amazing hot-dog spiders over our nightly campfires. The tour simply wouldn’t be possible without them.
To find out more about past and future participating poets and musicians, please visit our Past page.
To find out more about the Grand River, visit the Grand River Conservation Authority. They’re the folks who manage the water and natural resources along the Grand for the thirty-nine municipalities and close to one million residents who live by the water.
We’d like to thank our amazing audiences in Elora, West Montrose, Waterloo, Bridgeport, Cambridge, Paris, Brantford, and Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. We’ve had audience members come up to us after the show and recite poems they know by heart. We’ve had audience members come out for beers with us. And we’ve had audience members come out the next day to our launch spot to wave us off. We can’t thank you enough for showing us that poetry is a vital part of your lives.
And here are some other fabulous organizations who help make Fish Quill Poetry Boat happen. You can learn more about them on their websites.
We wanted to bring contemporary Canadian poetry out into small towns and rural communities. And we wanted to do it in a way that would make poetry feel like something people can relate to. And something that seemed like fun.
At first we thought we would ride horses from town to town, and call ourselves the Royal Canadian Mounted Poets (RCMP). Then we figured since we don’t know how to ride horses, don’t own horses, and would probably break all our bones on our way to the readings, that was probably a bad idea.
Then we thought of the perfect unconventional tour vehicle: the canoe.
For riverside towns, the water is a huge part of the life of the community. Travelling along a river seemed like an ideal way to get to know a region rather than just parachuting in for a reading, talking about ourselves and our work, and then taking off.
We chose the Grand River in southwestern Ontario. The Grand is a beautiful river with tonnes of herons, turtles, wildflowers, and spots to camp along its shores. It flows 300 kilometres from the highlands of Dufferin County to Port Maitland, where it empties into Lake Erie. It’s also a river that connects a whole string of small and medium-sized towns where we found fantastic local organizations willing to partner with us to set up some evenings for poetry and music.
We also found possibly the greatest canoe company in the world: Treks in the Wild, a Brantford-based outdoor outfitter run by Andy Tonkin. We called Andy out of the blue and said, “We’re thinking of taking eight poets on a reading tour of the Grand River but we don’t have any canoes. Would you like to help us?”
Now Andy not only lends us as many canoes as we need every year, free of charge, but he and his wife Val shuttle us around in their van, show us paddling tricks that keep us from drowning, and have taught us how to make amazing hot-dog spiders over our nightly campfires. The tour simply wouldn’t be possible without them.
To find out more about past and future participating poets and musicians, please visit our Past page.
To find out more about the Grand River, visit the Grand River Conservation Authority. They’re the folks who manage the water and natural resources along the Grand for the thirty-nine municipalities and close to one million residents who live by the water.
We’d like to thank our amazing audiences in Elora, West Montrose, Waterloo, Bridgeport, Cambridge, Paris, Brantford, and Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. We’ve had audience members come up to us after the show and recite poems they know by heart. We’ve had audience members come out for beers with us. And we’ve had audience members come out the next day to our launch spot to wave us off. We can’t thank you enough for showing us that poetry is a vital part of your lives.
And here are some other fabulous organizations who help make Fish Quill Poetry Boat happen. You can learn more about them on their websites.
SPONSORS AND COLLABORATORS
This tour has been made possible by amazingly generous financial support and/or collaboration from the following organizations:
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
calq.gouv.qc.ca Coach House Books chbooks.com Vehicule Press vehiculepress.com Wolsak and Wynn wolsakandwynn.ca Palimpsest Press palimpsestpress.ca Open Book: Ontario openbookontario.com rare Charitable Research Reserve raresites.org Brick Books brickbooks.ca |
BridgeKeepers (West Montrose Residents' Association, Inc.) bridgekeepers.ca Chiefswood National Historic Site chiefswood.com Grand River Conservation Authority grandriver.ca The New Quarterly tnq.ca The Station Coffee House & Gallery brantfordstationgallery.ca Bingemans Grand Experiences bingemans.com The Brown Dog Coffee Shoppe browndogcoffeeshoppe.com Gallery on the Grand galleryonthegrand.com Elora Farmers Market elorafarmersmarket.com Blaurock Press blaurockpress.com Geist geist.com The Wired Up Pugs Cafe-Bistro thewireduppugscafebistro.com |