Hot Springs Village poet featured at Wednesday Night Poetry
Hot Springs Village poet John Swinburn 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. today. Swinburn will begin his feature set at 7:15 p.m., followed by another round of open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
Born in Brownsville, Texas, and raised in Corpus Christi until leaving for college in Austin, Swinburn has also lived in homes from Chicago to New York and back to Texas again. He and his wife of almost 40 years, Janine, moved to Hot Springs Village to pursue a more relaxed life experience.
“I retired as early as I could with the resources available to me, at age 58. Thanks to a frugal lifestyle, we’re able to get by on savings and retirement income,” Swinburn said in a news release.
A self-proclaimed jack of all trades, Swinburn spent most of his career in positions of leadership. He owned and operated an association management company. Before that, he was an association executive for several professional societies and associations.
As a poet, Swinburn began writing “too long ago to remember when.” He has had two poems published; one in a northwest Arkansas magazine (Do South magazine) and one in an anthology of Hot Springs Village writers. He doesn’t actively pursue publishing but says that may change. He writes almost every day, often posting once or twice a day to his blog, which serves as a personal journal and repository of his writing as it is in progress.
“My poetry is an amalgamation of fear, love, hate, hope, loathing, and desire, all woven into a tapestry that defies easy description. I write poetry today as a means of capturing emotions my regular prose simply can’t adequately express. Poetry seems to better mine the depths of my emotions than does prose (though both can wring tears from powdered granite). I love to write poetry, even when it’s dark and dangerous, because it opens me up to explore what drives me, what’s chasing me, and what matters most to me,” he said.
This will be Swinburn’s third time to feature at WNP. “We are glad to have him back with us. He is a solid writer of great quality, depth, and description,” Kai Coggin, host of the weekly poetry series, said in the release.
This week marks 1,605 consecutive Wednesdays of open mic poetry in downtown Hot Springs since Feb. 1, 1989.
A celebration of life for the founder and longtime host of WNP, the late Bud Kenny, will be held at Superior Bathhouse Brewery, at 7 p.m. Friday (see related article on Page One). There will be an open mic, music by local musicians Chuck Dodson and Larry Womack, dancing, and “remembering a good man.” All are welcome. Email wednesdaynightpoetry@ gmail.com for more information.