Award winning Poetry Walk returns to Courtenay with a new interactive twist
Caitlyn Leahy and her family embrace with poet Diana Kolpak after sharing an emotional moment. From left to right: husband Mark van Eijk, father Dan Leahy, mother Juliana Leahy, Caitlyn Leahy, and Diana Kolpak. Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM
National poetry month has sprung to a start in the Comox Valley, with the Downtown Courtenay Business Improvement Association and Artful : The Poets joining together once again. Last year their Poetry Walk won the 2024 “Best in the West” award from Business Improvement Areas of B.C., for inventiveness, community engagement, relationship building between business and arts, and repeatability. The event is back and bigger this year, with the addition of two interactive poetry booths across town.
The poetry booths invite passers by to engage directly with the art, by sitting and speaking with a poet, before they write a brand new poem right there for the patron to take home.
For a peek into that experience, here is a transcript of poet Diana Kolpak reading out the poem she had just written for local resident Caitlin Leahy at a poetry booth outside the Courtenay Library on Saturday, April 5th.
“I learned from Caity that today they went and took out some money to pay for their first house. And that her dad and her mom are here too. And her dad is happy 'cause he just had a heart surgery and everything's going great. And you moved to the island just last year, right? And so I asked her to pick a postcard from a selection I have, and it's got shells on it. And she also requested that I use the words ‘little red house’ in her poem.”
Caitlyn Leahy holds the poem written for her by Diana Kolpak. Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM
“For Caity”
We leave behind a scattering of memories
Dream patterns in the sands of time
To remind us where our footsteps have taken us
Life lessons to guide us forward to futures both planned and unplanned:
Hearts beating bright and strong
A little red house full of sunshine
So many miracles that rise
As joyful songs of the everyday…
Poet and event coordinator Diana Kolpak spoke to CHLY and CVOX at the library after that moment witnessed and transcribed, about the Poetry Walk and the poem she read for Caity.
“As you've just seen it can be quite emotional and miraculous and stunning. So yeah, I just like to help foster creativity and bring a little joy and magic into the world,” she said.
Kolpak said that she calls herself a storyteller, but using different media, from poetry to fiction, theatre, and photography to tell her stories. She said the motivation for adding live events to the Poetry Walk this year was “just looking for a way to make poetry more accessible to people and to help people understand that poetry isn't something that just sits in dusty books on a shelf somewhere, but that it can be fun and it can actually be a very interesting and heartfelt moment of human connection.”
A second Pop-Up Poetry Booth will take place on Saturday April 12th at Gladstone Brewing Company from 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Kolpak said that compared to the library, “it'll be a different sort of crowd and I'm looking forward to whatever that adventure turns into as well.”
Caitlyn Leahy and Diana Kolpak share a hug at the poetry booth outside the Courtenay Library. Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM
When asked about the experience of writing poetry on the spot, face-to-face with her audience, Kolpak said it is wonderful and a little bit terrifying… especially when they ask for rhymes!
“I love the challenge of it and the thrill of it. And you just have those magic moments that you can't predict are gonna happen, and that's what life is all about,” she said.
Another new addition to the Poetry Walk this year was a Poem Palooza, hosted at the library following the pop up booth last Saturday, where the 25 poets involved in this year’s walk each had the opportunity to perform a selection of their poetry.
The Poetry Walk itself is a collaboration between those 25 poets, and 25 businesses in Downtown Courtenay. For the month of April, each poet has an eight line poem painted on their partner shop’s window, all located around 4th, 5th and 6th Streets, as well as Cliffe and Duncan Avenues. Readings of each poem are also available to hear on the Downtown Courtenay Business Improvement Association website, read by the poets themselves. The windows were painted by local artist Kelly Everill.
“It's just a really interesting, and I think forward-thinking, way of bringing together business and culture,” Kolpak said. “And then people can walk around all month and look at the poems on the windows, which is quite lovely.”
Kolpak said that Artful : The Poets meet at Artful : The Gallery the first Monday of every month for live readings of poetry, so if you don’t get your fill this National Poetry Month, there is plenty more to go around.
Until then, enjoy rambling the streets and reading the poems decorating storefronts throughout downtown.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with CVOX.