news | Tuesday March 5, 2013

The Line Has Shattered

The Line Has Shattered is an hour-long documentary that revisits Vancouver’s landmark 1963 Poetry Conference as well as the poetry and thought of the visiting American poets: Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov. Vancouver’s invite brought their voices in from the margins and set them loose in the imaginations of both Canadian and American students. These radical poets inspired a rising generation to embrace new, open forms of poetry, and to see the field of poetry as a meaningful lifetime vocation.

Narrated by poet Phyllis Webb, who documented the event at the time, The Line has Shattered sits in on the conference that helped alter the course of North American literature and put Vancouver forever on the literary map. The conference lives on in the hearts, minds and writings of North American poetry lovers.

The Line Has Shattered will be screened for the first time at the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre in downtown Vancouver on Thursday, March 21st at 7:30pm.