Darek Dawda
DAREK DAWDA—aka Drek Daa—arrived in Canada from Poland in 1990 and enrolled in his first ESL course. Ten years later, he began writing poetry in English, and has since won, among other honors, the title of Canadian Individual Performance Poetry Co-Champion at the 2004 Spoken Wordlympics. This year, he has released his first CD, Just Jittering, and has been invited as Poet of Honour to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Halifax. CBC radio fans know him as Drek Daa: That Polish Guy. Dawda is a psychotherapist, and the brains and energy behind CYRK, Winnipeg’s new innovative performance space.