WNP to feature English teacher
Little Rock poet Caroline Earleywine will be this week’s feature for Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The evening will begin at 6:30 p.m. with an open mic session for all poets and Earleywine will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
A native of Batesville, Earleywine began writing poetry when she was 7. “I was a really quiet little kid,” she said in a news release. “I expressed myself by writing short poems.” Earleywine didn’t start writing poetry seriously until she was a journalism major at the University of Arkansas. That’s when she read “The Bell Jar,” a novel by poet Silvia Plath. “After reading it I knew poetry was what I really wanted to do.” She graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2011 with a B.A. in English and in 2012 with a Master of Arts in Teaching. Earleywine is an M.F.A. candidate at Queens University in Charlotte, N.C., where she is an assistant editor for its literary magazine, Qu.
Earleywine has been an English teacher at Bryant High School since 2012. “My job is to try to convince teenagers that poetry is actually cool.”
When asked what inspires her to put pen to paper, she said, “I am not an articulate speaker. Poetry helps me to process my thoughts. I like to spend time with my words so I can properly frame my emotions and experiences.”
She writes primarily narrative poetry. “They’re about people I know and family. Feminism is a big topic for me.” The bulk of her work is free verse, although lately she has been writing more formal poetry. Earleywine credits that change to her working with Pulitzer Prize poet Morri Creech on her M.F.A. program at Queens University.
Earleywine represented Arkansas at the 2013 Individual World Poetry Slam and placed second at the 2013 Arkansas Arts Center Ekphrastic Poetry Slam. In 2015 she served on the planning committee for the Southern Fried Poetry Festival in Little Rock, and she hosted the Phenomenal Women showcase that year. Her poetry has been published in Germ Magazine, Words Dance, Prong and Posy, Nailed Magazine, and The Legendary.
Email budonfoot@yahoo.com. for more information.