Local poet, Heather Haley is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her video poetry festival tonight and tomorrow, Nov. 19 – 20, 2010 at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinemathèque film theatre (1131 Howe St., Vancouver, Canada). There are two nights of video poetry. The first half of the evening features popular pieces from past showings and the second half of the evening includes a live poetry performance and this year’s entries. Saturday, November 20, 2010, a free panel discussion about poetry and making the voice visible is being presented at 4 pm.

Writer Mark Harris has written an article about Heather and the festival for the Georgia Straight newspaper,

Southern B.C. is one of the most creative corners of Canada, but without a guide you’d never know it. Filmmakers give the cold shoulder to animators, novelists stare through playwrights, and so on. Artists in different disciplines don’t hang out at the same bars, and they rarely attend each other’s parties. In the Lower Mainland, the introspection upon which all creativity depends extends to the social scene as well.

This probably explains why Quebec-born, Bowen Island–based poet-curator Heather Haley discovered the hybrid discipline of video poetry while living abroad. In Vancouver to host the 10th-anniversary edition of Visible Verse at the Pacific Cinémathèque (1131 Howe Street) on Friday and Saturday (November 19 and 20), Haley explained to the Georgia Straight how she discovered her unusual vocation.

“I lived in Los Angeles for many years,” she said while sipping tea on Davie Street. “I was going to be a rock star,” she added, laughing.

You can find the rest of the article here.