WNP features 2018 Spa City Slam winner
Award-winning poet, filmmaker and social activist Zachary Crow 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 Crow will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
Crow won the 2018 Spa City Slam during Arts & the Park this spring. The performance poetry contest was held in the big tent in Hill Wheatley Plaza. He took home the first-place prize of $300.
According to a news release, in 2008 Crow graduated from Harding University with a B.A. in Electronic Media Production. Two years later, he found himself in Israel working on a documentary about the Palestinians on the West Bank, titled “We See No Evil.” The film was released in 2013.
Although he had written an occasional poem while in college, it wasn’t until 2012 that he began to write in earnest. He was in Atlanta working for the Open Door Community which provided services for the homeless and those in prisons. “It was a residential facility. I was living with the people I was helping,” said Crow. “Poetry just started flowing out of me.”
When he returned to Arkansas, Crow worked at a homeless shelter in Little Rock called Our House. While there, he shot footage for a film about the homeless in Arkansas.
He is working on a documentary titled “Pipeline.” “It explores Arkansas’ cradle to prison pipeline, particularly as it relates to school discipline and juvenile detention in Arkansas,” Crow said in the release. “Today, Arkansas has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.”
In 2017, Crow produced a program called “Inside Out,” during which 12 performance poets presented 30 poems written by inmates in the Arkansas prison system. The program has been presented twice in Little Rock and once in Hot Springs at Wednesday Night Poetry. It is slated to be produced this fall in northwest Arkansas. Proceeds from those performances help with the production costs for “Pipeline.”
Crow is the director of DecARcerate, dedicated to ending mass incarceration in Arkansas. The grass roots coalition works through community education, smart legislation, and direct action.
When asked how he came to be in this line of work, Crow said, “After I finished the film about the West Bank I went to work at Walgreens. I was making a living, but there was nothing satisfying about it. So, I got the job at the homeless shelter in Atlanta, and I knew this was my calling — working for social justice.”
Crow’s poetry explores the intersections of race, class, religion, and life in the American South. His work critiques what he calls “the American empire, oligarchy and systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression.”
The first full-length book of his poetry, “Dancing In The Eddies,” was released this past spring. Written in 34 parts, Crow describes it as an autobiographical examination of birth, death, love, loss, and the danger of being in the wake of dismantled dreams. The book is available online at http://www.amazon.com. He will have signed copies available Wednesday night at WNP.
Email budonfoot@yahoo. com for more information about Wednesday Night Poetry.