The Calgary International Spoken Word Festival is an annual festival celebrating spoken word poetry and performance, historically held in late March and April.
About
The festival brings poets from across Canada and internationally to Calgary for performances, workshops, slams, panels, open mics and tributes. It grew out of the Calgary Spoken Word Society, which also runs a monthly poetry slam. Past editions used venues like the Auburn Saloon, the Banff Centre and Festival Hall.
Poet Sheri-D Wilson created the Calgary Spoken Word Society in November 2003, and it presented the first annual festival in 2004; the 2014 edition was the 11th annual. The Society is still active in 2026 with monthly slams at Dickens Pub and other programming, but no 2025 or 2026 edition of the annual festival has been announced. The last edition we could confirm was in 2014, and nothing has been announced since.