Wednesday Night Poetry to feature 10-year-old poet
Ten-year-old Alana Spencer 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 Spencer will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.
Wednesday is Spencer’s 10th birthday and she wanted to celebrate it reading her poetry at WNP, a news release said. She started performing at WNP when she was 7. At the age of 8, Spencer was the youngest featured poet in the 28-year history of the weekly event.
“Don’t come expecting to hear a bunch of little kid poems,” the founder and current host of WNP, Bud Kenny, said in the release. “Often when she walks away from the microphone, I’m amazed at the maturity with which she has approached a subject. When she does that I can’t help but ask the audience, ‘How many of you were thinking about that when you were her age?’ Always I find everyone in the audience shaking their head.”
“I started writing poetry at the age of 7,” said Spencer. “It was before school started, and I picked up a pencil and paper and just started making poems.”
She will be in the fifth grade this year at Lakeside Elementary School.
Her mother, Shannon Buck, has been a regular participant at Wednesday Night Poetry for several years. Spencer said, “One night when my mom was going to poetry, I asked where she was going. She told me and I wanted to go. That’s how I ended up here.”
The topics of Spencer’s poetry are about her life, fantasy worlds, pets, family, friends, “and sometimes randomness,” she said. “Sometimes I spill my heart on the pages so much I cry when I read it.” She writes a mixture of rhyming poetry, free verse and haiku.
“My two favorite poets are Kai Coggin and, of course, my mother,” she added.
Email budonfoot@yahoo.com for more information about Wednesday Night Poetry.