Wednesday Night Poetry to feature environmental activist
Poet and environmental activist Al Brooks will be this week’s feature for Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave. The regular open mic session for all poets will begin at 6:30 p.m. and Brooks will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.
A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., but currently living in Waldron, Brooks served as a rifleman in the Army during the Korean conflict. When he returned home, he attended City College in New York City and got his degree in electrical engineering. He worked in that field for 25 years.
In 1970, Brooks fell madly in love with a woman named Jane, and that’s when he started writing poetry. “I always loved poetry,” he said in a news release. “And when I met Jane I started writing it. Little poems for birthdays, anniversaries, or whatever excuse I could come up with to write one for her.” They were married for 42 years. Jane died of cancer in 2012.
“It was Jane’s idea to move to Arkansas and establish a self-sufficient homestead,” Brooks said. They moved from New Jersey to rural Scott County, built a house, put in a garden, raised livestock and got involved with the community. He became a volunteer firefighter and firefighting instructor. Brooks also drove an ambulance and was a biomedical engineer in the local hospital. In the 1980s, he taught electronics for five years at what is now University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.
“In my spare time I got involved with environmental and political issues,” Brooks added. He was one of the founders of the Green Party of Arkansas, a charter member of the Ouachita Watch League and a co-founder of the Scott County Organization to Protect the Environment. In 2006, SCOPE won the Arkansas Environmental Stewardship Award. For 10 years, Brooks wrote a weekly environmental column for the Waldron News, which garnered him a journalism award from the Arkansas Sierra Club in 2008.
“Sometimes environmental issues will creep into my poetry,” said Brooks. “But that is never the primary subject of the poem. My poems are about people I know and love. I still write poems for Jane.”
Email budonfoot@yahoo. com for more information about Wednesday Night Poetry.