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Our last slam of the regular 09-10 season features Shantay Grant!
Shantay Grant performs at the last Throw Poetry Collective slam of the regular season.
Workshop: Self-Promotion in the Digital Age
For all you artists out there who want to learn how to better promote yourself and your art online, here’s the workshop for you!
Workshop: Self-Promotion in the Digital Age
Atelier: Autopromotion dans l'ère numérique
Throw this through your speakers!
Monday, Feb. 1
Throw Slam featuring Ritallin (Ottawa). Proceeds to Doctors without Borders for relief efforts in Haiti. $7. 7:30 sign-up // 8:00 show. O’Hara’s Pub, 1197 University.
Monday, March 1
Throw Slam featuring Barbara Adler (Vancouver). $7. 7:30 sign-up // 8:00 show. O’Hara’s Pub, 1197 University.
Monday, April 5
Throw Slam featuring Shauntay Grant (Halifax). $7. 7:30 sign-up // 8:00 show. O’Hara’s Pub, 1197 University.
Tuesday, April 20
Throw Semi-Finals featuring C.R. Avery (Vancouver). $10. 8:00 show. Divan Orange, 4234 St. Laurent.
Tuesday, May 18
Throw Finals featuring 2009 Canadian National Slam Champions “The Recipe” (Ottawa). $10. 8:00 show. Divan Orange, 4234 St. Laurent.
February Slam in support of Haiti relief efforts
Throw is coming back for another round on Monday, February 1st. There will be a two-round slam and open mic (come right at 7:30 to sign-up!). This month we will be raising funds for relief efforts in Haiti. Proceeds will be donated to Doctors Without Borders. So come out, throw down, clap your heart away & help us make a serious contribution.
This month’s not-to-be-missed feature is Greg “Ritallin” Frankson from Ottawa. This busy guy co-founded Capitol Slam, the Artist Alliance for Mental Health and is the Poet Laureate of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership.
If you checked out last year’s CD release for 3-2-1-Throw!, you will remember Ritallin as the front man of Instant Release, who had the place bumping and grinding until last call.
PS. Buy a copy of 3-2-1-Throw! at the Feb. 1 slam and all $10 will be contributed to DWB for Haiti relief efforts.
Do. Not. Miss. This.
Throw January Slam featuring Brendan McLeod!
Throw Collective’s monthly slam returns for 2010 with none other than Brendan McLeod of The Fugitives (see below for his out-of-control bio). We’ve got tricks up our sleeves & a crazy line-up to serve your poetic prowess proper in the coming year. So come-one-come-all, drop a poem, slam your heart out, listen&listen&listen and be wowed by this month’s out of control feature.
O’Hara’s Pub. 1197 University. Sign-up: 7:30 // Show: 8:00. $7.
Brendan McLeod is a former Vancouver and Canadian SLAM poetry champion. He was runner-up at the 2005 World SLAM Championship, held in Holland. As a novelist, he beat out over 500 entries to win the 2006 International 3 Day Novel Contest for his book, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley, which was also nominated for the 2008 Re:Lit Award for fiction, Canada’s top prize for independent presses. That same year, his music group, The Fugitives, were nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award. He has an MA in Philosophy and is an active youth arts educator and writing mentor.
Montreal Returns from the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word 2009
Naccarato takes the stage on finals night in Victoria, BC.
Montreal’s slam team brings home bronze from the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word
November, 2009. This year marked the second time Throw Poetry Collective has sent a slam team to compete in the national slam championships at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. The team featured Montreal Mirror Noisemakers Alessandra Naccarato (2007) and Chris Masson (2009), as well as new-comer Deanna Smith and powerhouse Rachna Vohra, with alternate Nooreen Nathoo. They were coached by Def Poetry Jam’s Regie Cabico, who has played a key role in the international slam community over the last decade.
The festival took place in Victoria, B.C. From November 10-14th and featured eleven teams from across the country, as well as one wild card team formed on the first night of the festival. Montreal took the festival by storm, placing first in the preliminary rounds as the only team to win both of their qualifying slams. In finals, the team came third only to festival veterans Ottawa (first place) and Vancouver (second place). Now that they have returned, they are gearing up for the 2009-2010 Throw Poetry Slam season.
On the first Monday of each month, Throw holds a slam/open-mic at O’Hara’s pub (1197 University ave.). Twelve poets compete for scores from randomly selected judges in the audience, with the top five scoring individuals moving onto a second round. In May and June, the highest twelve scoring poets of the season will take part in semi-finals and then finals, to see which five individuals will form the team. The team will be given the opportunity to train with Cabico, and compete in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in October 2010. The festival will be held in Ottawa, Ontario and is expected to grow from twelve competing teams to twenty, as it transitions into a bilingual event.
In the coming months, audiences can expect to see members of the 2009 slam team in action along with other dynamics poets of all ages and backgrounds performing in French and English. Each slam also features prominent poets from across Canada, such as Ian Ferrier and Moe Clark, Brendan McLeod (Vancouver), Greg “Ritallin” Frankson (Ottawa) and David Silverberg (Toronto). As the audience continues to grow and energy surrounding the collective mounts, one can only expect an stronger competition and a potential gold in Montreal’s future.
Montreal Gets Ready to Slam Victoria | The Link
http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/1840
Montreal’s Throw Collective is headed to B.C.
GRAPHIC VIVIEN LEUNG
They are leaving Montreal with innovative verbal tactics and a brand new poetic arsenal. In Victoria, B.C., they will cross words with their most talented peers in the biggest, longest and toughest slam of the year.
Chris Masson, Alessandra Naccarato, Nooreen Nathoo, Deanna Smith and Rachna Vohra will represent Montreal at the sixth Canadian Festival of Spoken Words, a.k.a. the Slam Nationals, Nov. 10 to 14.
“We’re getting ready for four nights of intense slamming,” said Montreal Throw Collective head coordinator Chris Masson. “Last year in Calgary, we had six-hour long slams!”
Though there are no jerseys, no mascots and no anthems, the nationals work just like a sports competition, he explained. The judges who evaluate the poets are randomly selected from the audience. Competitors are organized into teams, who represent the country’s biggest cities, and they compete in rounds, playoffs and finals.
When asked about Montreal’s main competitors, Masson laughed and said Halifax has won the last two Slam Nationals, but Vancouver also takes part in a lot of competitions.
“It’s not about the competition, really,” he said, explaining that spending four days among slam people was the best part of the festival. He said that last year, after the slam competition during the day, the artists would meet in someone’s room and keep slamming for the rest of the night.
“I’ve made so many friends on the national slam scene that I think I can go to any major city in the country and find a place to slam—and a place to crash,” he said.
The poets representing the city this year made the team by winning the slams organized last season by the Throw Collective. This year’s team is very different from last year’s.
“We were four skinny white guys,” said Masson with a smile. “This year, there’s me and four women of culturally diverse backgrounds.”
Though the themes and voices of Montreal’s Throw Collective have changed, as the audience could see in a preview of pieces during the last monthly slam at O’Hara’s Pub on Nov. 2, the team has a lot of fun pieces, but also ones that deal with more down-to-Earth topics.
Naccarato, for example, has a poem on sexuality and violence towards women. Nathoo, the team’s alternate, will present a poem praising women who wear size 12 jeans. Smith, who grew up in Montreal but is from “Les Antilles,” has a bilingual piece dealing with “curry-chicken-poutine hybrids” like herself.
It’s only the second time that Montreal has had a team taking part in the competition, resulting from the revival of the English slam scene in the city over the past three years. Masson explained that next year’s festival in Ottawa should be more bilingual—a verbal battle Montreal should be able to measure up to.
