Our Peace Gift to the World

 We did it!

The World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival had a wonderful opening as we launched our World Poetry Peace E-Anthology, our gigantic hug for peace at the IK Barber Learning Centre located at the University of British Columbia.

Please share our World Poetry Peace Anthology with all your friends and family and help the words of peace around the world.  Click here to read the World Poetry Peace E-Anthology !

The program was full of music, Rio Samaya Band, dance by the Jasmine dancers ,  a  poetic First Nations welcome, an inspired talk on peace, a short documentary film, Silence, which was well received, and our countdown and connection to the live link on the internet with people from many countries linking up to the free peace  E-anthology around the world.

 It was so exciting to see winners from , Kwaku Kesse Somuah and Kwame Yirenkyi come through the door, read poems and speak on peace. They joined Rio Samaya Band and playing their beautiful and colourful drums as many of us danced.

There are so many people and partners to thank; it is hard to name them all.

A thank you to the E-book team who worked so hard on our beautiful and inspiring book: Carol Knepper, Editor, Heidi Mueller, Duke Ashrafuzzaman for providing the original poems and also adding borders to the gift poems. Yilin Wang who began compiling poems and Ariadne Sawyer for continuing the work as a poem herder. Bernice Lever for putting the Paths to Peace segment and Saleh Mazumder for directing the Internet launch. Yang from our great partner Cinevolution for technical support and many others. Also, a thank you to our talented and special World Poetry Canada International Face-book group for their support and poetic contributions.

 Great thanks to the staff of the IK Barber Learning Centre at UBC for providing us with a home for the month of April and a launching space to share the E-Anthology.

Thanks to the World Poetry Setup Team for helping put up the displays including the great peace posters by Sattar Saberi.  A grateful thank you to the poets Wanda John Kehewin and Helen Bar-Lev who donated their free gift poems. 300 were printed out and are available to anyone who comes to see the gallery display.

The Peace Festival continues on Thursday April 11, 7-9 pm with a Celebration of National Poetry Month. We feature Penn Kemp with her book on Jack Layton, Art in Action and other poets and musicians. 301 Lillooet room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, 1961 East Mall Vancouver, www.ikebarberlearningcentre.ubc.ca/

As always, we thank our partners in kind:

World Poetry in kind Sponsors and Partners:  Exclusive Media Sponsor: CTV. Print Sponsor: TAN-The Afro News. Partners: Signature partner: Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society, The Vancouver Tagore Society, Jasmine Dance Group, Canada Council for the Arts, The Writer’s Union, Rice Paper Magazine, The Asian Canadian Writer’s Workshop, The Airport Quality Inn Hotel, Aboriginal Writer’s Collective West Coast. Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia (UBC Library)  World Poetry gratefully acknowledges the support from the City of Richmond.