by John Threlfall | May 12, 2014 | Award, Graduate, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Writing
While their printed format may have changed, the local Monday Magazine is still running their annual M Awards honouring what they describe as “Greater Victoria’s best and brightest in the arts and entertainment field.” Fine Arts faculty, students, staff and alumni have been frequent nominees and winners in the past, and this year’s lineup is no different.
Rather than list all nominees in each category, we’ve just listed the Fine Arts associated nominees below, and you can vote online here. According to the rules, you can only vote online once, and must vote in a minimum of 20 categories. Voting closes at 5pm Friday, May 30—and you’ll automatically be entered to win $75 at Zambri’s.
MUSIC:
Top Electronic Artist: The Krells (featuring School of Music’s Kirk McNally and John Celona)
- Top Avant Garde/New Music Artist/Composer or Group: School of Music concert manager Kristy Farkas is nominated alongside Aventa Ensemble (under the direction of Music’s Bill Linwood), as well as Music alumni Daniel Brandes, Christopher Reiche and Alex Jang. It’s worth noting that every nominee in this category is associate with UVic’s School of Music!
- Top Classical Artist or Group: the Lafayette String Quartet
THEATRE:
- Top Overall Production: the Phoenix production The Skin of Our Teeth is nominated alongside Theatre professor Brian Richmond‘s production of My Fair Lady for his Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre (which he also starred in, alongside grad Kholby Wardell). Phoenix talent were also involved in nominated shows Calendar Girls (featuring Randi Edmunson) and Will Weigler‘s From the Heart.
- Top Improv/Sketch or Variety Show: alumna Britt Small‘s Atomic Vaudeville company is nominated, alongside Paper Street Theatre, which features Monica Ogden.
- Top Emerging Company/Artist: Kerploding Theatre, run by Phoenix alum Mollison Farmer; Impulse Theatre, run by Andrew Barrett, New Blood Theatre, Robin Gadsby and Kieran Wilson
- Top Original Production: Kitt & Jane by the Phoenix Theatre alumni company SNAFU, featuring the talents of Ingrid Hansen and Katherine Greenfield, who are also nominated for the SNAFU/WHoS co-production Fractured Fables; From the Heart: Enter the Journey of Reconciliation, by Phoenix PhD alum and former instructor Will Weigler; Paper Street Theatre’s An Improvised Quentin Tarrantino featured Phoenix student Monica Ogden ; New Blood Theatre’s Judgement Day starred alumni Robin Gadsby and Kieran Wilson; and also featured the talents of Greenfield and Hansen.
WRITING:
- Top Spoken Word Performer: Writing undergraduate and former City of Victoria Youth Poet Laureate Aysia Law has earned a well-deserved nominated in this category
Be sure to add your vote to the efforts of our top achieving faculty, staff, students and alumni!
by John Threlfall | Apr 11, 2013 | Award, Events, Undergraduate, Writing
Department of Writing student Anna-Maria Landis has been named Alumnus of Honour for Victorious Voices, Victoria’s annual Secondary School Slam Championships.
A high-energy youth poetry festival that is widely recognized in the poetry community as one of the most inspiring and entertaining events of the year, Victorious Voices runs April 15 to 17 in Victoria and will feature performances not only by Landis but also Youth Poet Laureate and fellow Writing student Aysia Law.
Anna-Maria Landis
Landis, a first-year Writing student, has maintained her ties with Reynolds Secondary School through her weekly coaching sessions with their current slam team. “I’ve been encouraging them to keep writing, helping them to become a cohesive team, to think outside the box,” says Landis. “I’m trying to keep that poetry motivation alive at Reynolds; it’s important to have older students going back, for them to have those role models.”
It must be working, as the Reynolds slam team just came in second at Hullabaloo, the annual provincial youth poetry slam. “It’s pretty amazing how supportive other students are of hearing their friends read poetry,” she continues. “It kind of blows my mind.” She says slam is the ideal vehicle for high school expression. “All those hard feelings, those things that make you feel like a melodramatic teenager, you’re able to get out at a slam.”
Landis says she was inspired to begin performing poetry during her years at Reynolds thanks to visits by noted spoken word artists like The Fugitives and Shane Koyczan, who were brought in by English teacher Brad Cunningham. “I wasn’t even in his class,” she laughs, “but then I started going to [local slam collective] Tongues of Fire—that really sparked the interest for me—then we started our own slam team at Reynolds.”
She continues to be surprised by the level of support for spoken word at Reynolds. “We would have open mics at lunch hour and it was insane—a hundred high school students would come out and watch people read poetry,” she recalls. “Having that community from the get go gave a sense of momentum; you could express yourself through poetry. Most people in high school don’t usually perform poetry, it’s more a private thing.”
Landis and Law are not the only UVic students who will be performing new work at Victorious Voices; also among the six others on the bill for the April 16 “Still Victorious” Alumni Showcase is two-time Victorious Voices champion and former Reynolds student Zoe Duhaime, who is now studying “healthy sexuality, women’s studies, philosophy and English at UVic (but admits she spent most of this year “messing around in vague but wonderful Humanities courses”). And Writing grad Danielle Pope is one of the judges for the Finals.
Back on campus, Landis entered this video poem about her at-times difficult relationship with her mother in this year’s UVic Diversity Poetry Contest. “It was a huge risk the first time I performed it,” she admits. “But you get that taste of writing about people you know, which is scary, because of how it can affect them. Then it became the poem I was really known for, and I heard from a lot of moms who said they needed to hear things from that perspective.”
As for her career in the Writing department, Landis says it was a foregone conclusion. “My goal in life is to write and I knew if I was going to do anything academic that wasn’t writing, I’d get distracted from that goal,” she says. “Writing is my priority, and I’d heard so many good things about UVic’s program.”
But surprisingly, she isn’t focusing on poetry at this point. “I don’t know if I could do poetry in an academic setting,” she says with a chuckle. “A lot of the skills I’ve been learning seem to lend themselves more toward fiction. I find it really hard to confine poetry to the page; I like spoken word as a venue better.”
Victorious Voices: Semi-finals are at 7pm Monday, April 15, at the Victoria Event Centre on Broad Street. Still Victorious, the Alumni Showcase, starts 7:30pm Tuesday, April 16 at Solstice Café. Finals, featuring an opening poem by Victoria Poet Laureate Janet Rogers and the Alumnus of Honour Showcase, starts 7:30pm Wednesday, April 17 at the Event Centre.
by John Threlfall | Jan 8, 2013 | Award, Events, Undergraduate, Writing
Aysia Law, a second-year UVic Writing student, has been named the City of Victoria’s Youth Poet Laureate—a first not only for Victoria, but for Canada itself.
“I think it’s an amazing opportunity for a youth in the community, like me or future ones, to have some power in the community in shaping the vision of their own city,” Law told local Times Colonist reporter Amy Smart in this recent article.
Aysia Law is Victoria’s first Youth Poet Laureate
The Youth Poet Laureate will receive a $1,500 honorarium, $1,000 of project funding and a year-long mentorship during the term (January to December 2013) with Victoria’s 2012 Poetry Slam Champion, Jeremy Loveday, administered through the City of Victoria Youth Council. “I knew there’d be great interest, because we have an amazing youth poetry community in Victoria,” says Loveday, who also runs the Youth Outreach Program for the Victoria Poetry Project.
Loveday says there were 32 applicants, which was narrowed down to six finalists—including one other UVic Writing student—with the final judging based on what he describes as someone with “a full package.” “We needed someone with quality poetry and great creative ideas, but also a presence and the skills and experience to make that project come to life,” says Loveday. “Basically, Aysia was that person.”
Law winning the Diversity Writing Contest in 2011
Law admits she entered “on a bit of a whim” after hearing about the call for entries from her poetry professor, Carla Funk (who, coincidentally, was Victoria’s inaugural Poet Laureate). But there’s nothing whimsical about her talent, as Law earned first place in the fiction category of UVic’s Diversity Writing Contest in 2012, and has been performing at local spoken word events since moving here from Vancouver in 2011. She also volunteers with South Island Pride Youth and organizes Queer Quills, a writing group for queer, transgendered/transsexual and allied youth that meets weekly at downtown’s Solstice Café.
Her major project will be a poetry flash mob during National Poetry Month in April, and she will appear alongside Victoria’s current Poet Laureate, Janet Rogers, at various city events throughout the year. But Law is also interested in organizing other events, including one that’s close to her heart: a diversity slam.
“It would be a springboard for an open forum discussion about what our community needs,” Law explains. “The problem now is that we have more experienced poets coming to slams and spoken word nights—they are wonderful and have really good insights, but they’re not everyone we need to hear from. I’m hoping to bring in more youth and marginalized categories of people to come and speak about what they see; it would be a more inclusive event than the poetry slams I’ve seen so far. We need to bring more people in, make it more accessible, have more voices represented.”
One of Law’s other Writing professors, Lee Henderson, helped her prepare for the competition. “I jumped out of my socks and shoes when Aysia called to tell me she had been chosen as Victoria and Canada’s first Youth Poet Laureate,” says Henderson. “She’s such a passionate and dedicated writer with a great sense of humour and a natural instinct for language. She is the perfect choice as our first public voice for the city’s young poets. I know she’s going to make sure to include as many people in this experience as possible
. . . . This is great news for the local literary scene and the first year of a great new legacy.”
Law will perform the first poem of her new position to Victoria City Council at City Hall on January 17 with Janet Rogers. “She’ll read a poem, I’ll read a poem, then we split.” She pauses and gives a nervous laugh. “Okay, I’m a little scared.”
Click here to listen to an interview with Law and local CBC Radio’s All Points West host (and the Writing department’s 2013 Harvey S. Southam Lecturer) Jo-Ann Roberts.
There’s also this piece on Aysia from Vancouver’s Metro Times. And this piece from UVic’s Martlet.
You can also click here to see Law perform a piece at a local slam back in October 2012.
Rather than list all nominees in each category, we’ve just listed the Fine Arts associated nominees below, and you can vote online here. According to the rules, you can only vote online once, and must vote in a minimum of 20 categories. Voting closes at 5pm Friday, May 30—and you’ll automatically be entered to win $75 at Zambri’s.
