About Us

Our History

Urban Legends Poetry Collective began hosting events in empty Carleton University classrooms in response to a need for an alcohol-free space to make performance poetry accessible to all Ottawans, particularly youth and Muslim performers.

Founded in 2009 by Ian Keteku and Suhaib Ibn Najib, later organizers have included Sergio Guerra, Sean O’Gorman, Sarah Musa, Jamaal Amir Akbari, Xaamud Macalinkiisa, Khaleefa Hamdan, Panos Argyropoulos, Namitha Rathinappillai, Sol Schafer, Billie Nell, Jenica Shivkumar, and King Kimbit.

Under the directorship of Hamdan and Argyropoulos, and building upon the philosophy of Akbari, ULPC evolved to become a spoken word collective instead of just a slam, with a larger focus on community as opposed to competition.

ULPC has offered a rich diversity of programming including open mics, writing workshops, and specialized events such as: “Tell Me a Story Slam”, whose proceeds went to local charities; Womxn’s Slams, which facilitated a safe space for poets who identify as women or with womanhood; YouthSpeak!, a youth mentorship and writing program; and our poetry slam, where community members have honed their craft, taken home championship titles, and qualified for national competitions, where, since our inception, ULPC has cemented our legacy as a creative force in Canadian slam culture.

ULPC is deeply rooted in the Ottawa arts community, emerging as a product of the work of several generations of grassroots artists and arts organizers. Over our fifteen-year history, ULPC has become the home of spoken word in Ottawa, standing as the city’s sole year-round performance poetry series and a regularly sold-out staple of the local arts scene.

Our Mandate & Mission

ULPC’s mandate is to support local, regional, and national artists of all genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, ages to have a safe space to create and share poetry while simultaneously exposing audiences to professional artists and continuing the tradition of spoken word.

Our mission is to give every poet in the City of Ottawa the opportunity to share their work on an accessible platform and to encourage, support, and provide space for local artists and members of the Ottawa community to engage in writing and performance activities through spoken word poetry programming.

Our Values & community

ULPC is an environment cultivated for poets, by poets. This is a community in which we accept and celebrate the heart wrenching poetry, the activism poetry, the laugh-out-loud poetry. By providing a safe, culturally aware, and well-resourced space for poets to share their personal stories, and by platforming and elevating a range of diverse lived experiences, we hope to establish a more empathetic understanding of the world.

By eliminating barriers and empowering artists from marginalized communities, we hope to channel art as a means of promoting inclusion and solidarity, both within the spoken word community and in society. Such an approach reflects ULPC’s belief that, as an arts organization which engages in an art form rooted in Black and Indigenous storytelling, we have a responsibility to uphold and uplift voices which have historically been suppressed and silenced.