Wednesday Night Poetry to host 2017 Spa City Slam winner
Claudia Cerna, winner of the 2017 Spa City Slam, 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 begins at 6:30 p.m. and Cerna will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.
This year during the Arts & The Park celebration Cerna took home $300 in cash when she beat 15 performance poets from across Arkansas at the Spa City Slam. She also won a bath and massage for two at Quapaw Baths & Spa, where the event was held on Bathhouse Row.
A native of Costa Rica, Cerna earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from Westminster College in Missouri. She lives in Fayetteville, where she is active in that area’s poetry scene. She is a member of the Fayetteville poetry slam team and a regular at the monthly Last Saturday Variety Show.
Cerna started writing poetry in the eighth grade. “That year I lost one of my friends in a car accident and another to suicide. The school was greatly affected by that,” she said in a news release. “So, my eighthgrade English teacher showed us how to mourn in a healthy way. She introduced us to poetry. That year poetry saved my life, and it has been saving my life ever since.”
For most of her life Cerna has battled depression. “Whenever I have suicidal thoughts, I write to save myself. It’s my therapy. It helps me to understand the world around me,” she said. “In college I won an award for a collection of poems discussing my immigration to the U.S. and the cultural tensions it caused within my family. I’m a sales leader at Pier 1 Imports and I absolutely love my job.”
She also teaches voice and piano lessons at a private studio where she has worked since 2009.
“These days my writing has evolved from a strategy to keep from killing myself to a tool to show people that no matter what valley you find yourself in, there is always hope,” she said.
Email budonfoot@yahoo.com for more information.