Canada: Toronto celebrates April as the national poetic month

Poetry City, an annual celebration of National Poetry Month, encourages Mayors and City Councils across Canada to invite a local poet to do a reading at a council meeting.

This year, former Toronto Poet Laureate and current Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke is challenging Mayors and City Councils to participate.

The City of Toronto is the first Canadian municipality to appoint its own Poet Laureate to and advocate for poetry and the literary arts and encourages citizens to read, write and share poetry throughout the month of April.

"Toronto is pleased to be part of National Poetry Month and encourages other Canadian locations to participate in the annual Poetry City challenge," said Mayor John Tory. "It is vital this month, and every month, that we support the literacy of our residents and the literature of our artists,” www1.toronto.ca reports said.

Anne Michaels tweeted, “Very good to chat with Toronto City Councillors @joe_cressy, @joemihevc and @mfragedakis this morning. Thank you for supporting poetry.”

Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 Scarborough Centre), Chair of the City's Economic Development Committee said that the Poet Laureate position was one of the many ways that the City of Toronto supports the city's literary community.

John Tory‏  tweeted, “Celebrating the start of #NationalPoetryMonth with a powerful & thought-provoking poetry reading from @TOPoetLaureate, Anne Michaels.”

Michaels will be releasing her upcoming book of poetry All We Saw which will be published in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom this fall. To Write is one of the new poems in this book which she read at the City Council today to mark the Toronto's proclamation of National Poetry Month in April.

An evening of poetry event would be hosted by Michaels on Apr 3 starting at 7 p.m. where she would be joined by other fellow poets Roo Borson and Phoebe Wang at the Toronto Reference Library's Beeton Hall, 789 Yonge St.

Internationally applauded, Michaels had been the recipient of several international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Lannan Award for Fiction.

"Anne Michaels has inspired readers around the world with her works and now she can inspire them again as Toronto's new Poet Laureate," said Mayor John Tory, www1.toronto.ca reports said.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj, Image of Anne Michaels: Twitter)