by VINCENT TINGUELY

This year in spoken word was about reaching out to scenes beyond Montreal, concurrent with the growth and strengthening of our own scene. Local scribes and performers appeared with a cross-section of artists from around the world in a series of downloadable chapbooks like 100 poets against the war, edited by Paris expat Todd Swift and hosted by London-based Web zine nthposition.

com. Montrealers will also be on the forthcoming Dig Your Roots spoken anthology, featuring 15 selected artists - the Web site already hosts 100.

"Listening to people across Canada really gave me a sense of the scope and the extent of it. Spoken word lives in every part of this country," says Coco Café MC and Dig Your Roots judge Mahalia Verna. "I doubt that many of those people are aware of each other's existence, so maybe through something like Dig Your Roots, they'll get to experience what I experienced as a judge."

Anthony Bansfield, another ex-Montrealer, landed crucial funding to set up an exchange tour for African-Canadian griots between five Canadian cities. Montrealers Buttaphly and Jason Joseph performed in Halifax, and then Haligonians Shauntay Grant and iZrEAL, along with L.A. poet Baboo, performed at Coco Café. Commenting on the different perspectives on the "politics" theme of the event, Verna says, "With the Montreal people there was a reflection on blackness, the politics of globalization, war, things like that. And then for the Halifax people, politics involved their sense of being black in Nova Scotia. And for Baboo, the politics was the Black man-white man relationship in L.A. and in the United States."

In its second year, the Festival Voix d'Amériques brought in Bansfield and West Coast wordist Hilary Peach, as well as a selection of videopoems from the Vancouver Videopoem Festival. The Words and Music series brought in Lillian Allen and Eric Drooker, among others, on barnstorming tours. "Lillian - that was wicked, that was a dream come true," says poet Kaie Kellough. "Living in Calgary, Lillian Allen was a mythic figure, so it was like seeing her walk straight out of a book into real life."

On the local front, the Artists in the Community initiative brought Norman Nawrocki's cabaret style to Little Burgundy, and let Manchilde take his skills to youth from Leave Out ViolencE and Jeunesse 2000. "That was really exciting for me," says spoken word artist and Quebec Writers' Federation prez Ian Ferrier. "Typically, literary events happen in university contexts. This was an attempt to connect with people who don't always see this stuff, and to connect with writers we otherwise might not run into."

The Kalmunity collective is also doing much to give the scene a boost with its delirious blend of live musicians, singers and poets. "That's wicked," says sometime Kalmunity participant Kellough. "It's given a lot of poets a chance to get up and work with musicians. It's one thing to practice at home and go out once a month to open mics, and another to get up on stage and try to communicate with nine other people!"