Following the 20th International Poetry Festival, we began to reflect on the relevance of our programming, the meager improvement in our financial situation and, most importantly, our stance vis-à-vis the public which knows and attends our festival year after year, and the public which has not yet discovered us.

We wondered how to attract an audience that had not yet heard of our festival, wondered how to lure people who, more often than not, equate such an event with their dull and unremarkable school experiences with poetry.

Over the past 21 years, our audience –- that which motivated us, in the first place, to establish the IPF –- has grown. Thanks to the extraordinary support of both the local and regional media, we have succeeded in increasing our numbers. We are attracting more and more people from our city ; in addition, our audience has expanded outward into the region. We are and will always be profoundly grateful for their loyalty, their confidence, and their appreciation for this cultural event.

Interestingly, as our home-grown audience grew, we began to establish a following at the the national and international level ; for the first time— in 1990— people from further away attended. Slowly, the momentum began to build, so much so, that by the 18th year of the festival, these numbers slightly outnumbered the local crowd.

Faced with this new reality, we now recognize the importance of finding ways and means of connecting with this group, frequently and forcefully, not only to maintain ties but to expand this new audience, which has brought substantial economic benefit to Trois-Rivières, and has helped export a positive image of our city onto the world-stage. Our period of reflection and discussion lasted three years.

Parallel to this expansion of our audience, we invested a great deal of money and resources into marketing our city as the World Capital of Poetry, as a follow-up to Félix Leclerc’s 1985 prediction that it would eventually be so. We established the Poetry Boardwalk, the Monument to the Unknown Poet, and the Mailbox of Love Poems. We posted 100 poems in city buses and created a mini-Poetry Promenade in La Mauricie National Park. We started up a free « Maison de la Poésie » for visiting poets in a locale that could have earned substantial rental revenue. We negotiated reciprocal deals with other international festivals, and created many international poetry prizes including the Jaime-Sabines/Gatien-Lapointe Prize, with the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, and the Antonio-Viccaro International Poetry Prize, awarded each year to a poet from a different continent. The city also established the extraordinary « Place Alphonse-Piché » to support our initiatives and provided a face-lift to the 300 poetry plaques along the Poetry Boardwalk.

Over the years, we have been awarded a number of national and international prizes in recognition of the high level of professionalism of our organization thanks to the hard work of our volunteers.

For the poets of this world, the opportunity to read in Trois-Rivières is appealing ; it is recognition for their hard work. Our city allows them to dream, and offers them an adoring public that listens, with interest. Heading home from the festival in 2005, a poet informed us that he fell asleep on the plane and dreamt that he was flying straight to heaven. And when he saw a billboard advertising “Trois-Rivières – one kilometre” he knew, then, that it was true.

To Quebecor and to Pierre Karl Péladeau, we thank you for having understood this dream, and for understanding that to maintain and expand our growth we required a major partner to help boost our national and international visibility and offer a new and stable source of funding in these financially-strapped times of ours. A gift from the sky, Quebecor was the only organization to offer what we most desperately needed. Once again, we extend a heartfelt thanks to you, Pierre Karl Péladeau, and to all the members of your team.

This financial support increases the International Poetry Festival’s Grand Prize by $10,000 for the next five years. When added to the former $5,000 purse (awarded by the IPF over the past 21 years) this newly-injected money makes the prize as lucrative as the Governor General’s Award. Moreover, as of this year, the prize will be known as the « Grand Prix Quebecor du Festival International de la Poésie. » On September 29, the poet Marcel Labine will be the first recipient of a cheque for $15,000.

This support will also extend to the production, printing and distribution of our publicity materials not only in all the group’s French and English media, but in all its regional media. Hence, increased visibility and a real chance at achieving the goals we have set for our audience, poetry, and for maintaining our ties with the national and international poets before, during and after the 22^nd festival. Not to mention the benefits we will be reaping with the inclusion of the IPF on the home page of Quebecor’s website  : www.canoe.com.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for your support, and for your generous contribution to poetry, to the poets, and to the listening public.