Flamenco & Poetry

Palabra Flamenco is a literary flamenco ensemble joining English-language poetry and storytelling with traditional flamenco. 

Our ensemble includes artistic director and dance soloist Denise Yeo, musical director and guitarist Gareth Owen, and producer and poet Garth Martens. We are sometimes joined by special guests poet Jan Zwicky and singer Veronica Maguire.

We have toured the Victoria, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto fringe festivals, the Victoria Festival of Authors, and the Victoria Flamenco Festival.

In our series Dark Sounds, we create a new experience—fusing North American speech with the intensity of flamenco to offer urgent truth-telling about our cultural and planetary situation. Our focus is the dark core of sex, family, love, of being human. The climate crisis. Personal sorrows that pile up while smoke steeples the horizon.

Their next performance of Dark Sounds is September 24, 2025 at the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival. 

In traditional flamenco, dancer and guitarist improvise in response to Spanish-language singers, and one another. Here, they respond to poets.