Tag: Notes on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project

25th Anniversary Celebration

celebration

2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website.

To celebrate, I’m hosting an event:

“The Niagara Falls Poetry Project: Celebrating 25 Years of Discovering, Preserving, and Recovering the Literary Heritage of Niagara Falls”
 
Help celebrate National Poetry Month and the 25th anniversary of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project,  which collects, preserves, and promotes the poetry written about Niagara Falls. Poetry on the site ranges from 1604 to the present, includes all poetic forms, and ranges from the humorous to the erotic to the religious, powerful literary imaginings of Niagara Falls to limericks and doggerel, from the raptures of the sublimity of the falls to the despair of the despondent and suicidal, from the battles fought here to the stunters and daredevils seeking instant fame.
 
Andrew Porteus, curator of the site, will be joined by poets in a fun-filled short program including the historical significance of the poetry of Niagara Falls, and  reading some of their own poetry and some of the significant historical poems. 
 
This event will also mark the launch of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition, a juried competition with poems in any form, on the theme of Niagara Falls, (the waterfalls and/or the two cities), with a special award for the poem that best exemplifies the “Spirit of Niagara Falls.” Poems will be added to the website, and published in an anthology of Niagara poetry.
 
Paper will be provided for those inspired to write a poem on the spot,  before or during the program.
 
There will be cake!
 
Thursday April 9, 2026 at the Niagara Falls History Museum, 5810 Ferry St., Niagara Falls, Ontario, from 7-9 pm.
 
Contact aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca for more information

 

CAA Article

CAA
Last summer I got an unexpected call from the Niagara CAA magazine asking if they could feature me in their “What’s Your Favourite” column, which features local people talking about the area. The digital copy arrived this morning. 

“What’s Your Favourite”

Spike in Stats

spike
I enjoy looking at the stats for the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website. In addition to the number of hits on the site, they also show which pages are being looked at, how long each visitor is on the page, how many pages each visitor looks at, time of day, country that the visitor is from, and other stuff. One of these is the referrer, such as search engine, wikipedia pages, social media pages and the like. Lately I’ve been receiving a lot of visitors through the McMaster University portal. In the last few days there have been 144 visitors using the McMaster portal, and 100 of those were today between 2-4 pm, mostly viewing the same poem.

At other times that the site has been active (since 2001) I have noticed colleges and universities using the site through their portal, and I find it most gratifying to see it used by them. When I discovered a professor at a nearby university had been using the site in her course, I ended up giving a talk to her class about poetry in Niagara and its use in the social and historical record of the area.

So thanks, McMaster. If you’re a student there and have used the site, or if you’re the prof using the site as a teaching tool, please reach out (aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca) – I’d love to talk to you about how you are using it.

Many thanks,

Andrew

 

Niagara History and Poetry Podcast

 
 
history
I’ve talked about it for a while, but I’ve finally started up a podcast called Niagara History and Poetry, in which I discuss the history of Niagara Falls through the poetry that has been written about it.
The first episode is an introduction to the podcast, the second is about bears at the falls, and the third is about Captain Matthew Webb, who attempted to swim the rapids & whirlpool.

Click here for the video version

Click here for the audio version or go to your favourite podcast distributor and search for “Niagara Falls History & Poetry”

 
 
Please give it a listen, and feel free to comment, subscribe. like and share

Where are they coming from?

coming from

I have a plugin on the website to give various statistics about usage. I’ve noticed a couple of things this last week. When I look at the countries that people are visiting from, Ukraine, Russia, & Khazakhstan are in the top 10. There are usually just a handful of vistors that are not from Canada, the United States, or the United Kingdom.

Similarly, there are stats for the top referrers, usually topped by Google. This past week, however, the top referrer by far has been from McMaster University, although I can’t see from which department as you need login information to get any further in to their site. I know that sometimes my site is used in courses. I know, for example, that Niagara University has a course on Niagara Literature that uses the website, and also that the stats generally spike in September-October and again in January-February, coinciding with the beginning of academic terms.

Stats also spike when an individual who has a poem on the site is in the news. When Priscila Uppal, a well known poet and novelist died, I had about 1,200 hits on her poem Niagara Mermaids  on the day her death was announced, and they stayed high for a few days afterwards.

So if you’re dropping in from McMaster or anywhere else, I’d love to hear how you are using the site. You can drop a note in the comments, or email at aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. 

Cheers, Andrew