Wednesday Night Poetry Founder Bud Kenny will be this week's feature at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The regular open mic session for all poets begins at 6:30 p.m. and Kenny will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
According to a news release, Kenny is utilizing this feature performance to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his arrival in Hot Springs on Thanksgiving Day in 1977. He walked to Hot Springs with a pack pony and dog from Pennsylvania by way of the Oregon Coast and San Francisco, crossing the Continental Divide seven times on his 8,000-mile, three-and-a-half-year trek, and it was on that journey that he started seriously writing poetry. "I dabbled a bit with it in college," said Kenny. "But it wasn't until I was on the road, living with the constant rhythm of hoof beats, that I started thinking in terms of verse."
His reason for embarking on that journey was simple. "I wanted to get a firsthand look at this country I live in. So I thought, 'Why not walk?'" he said. "Initially I had no interest in making Hot Springs my home. I walked here because my mother had moved here from Ohio. I figured I'd stick around a year or so, then move on. But I fell in love with this town. So 40 years later, here I am."
Since walking into Hot Springs, Kenny has worked a variety of jobs, including being a motel maid, waiter at the Vapors, hot walker at Oaklawn, duck driver, announcer for a strip show, receptionist at a bath house, and a driver with a top hat on a horse-drawn carriage downtown. He also started up and ran two businesses of his own, The Mule Line Trolley and The Poet's Loft.
Over the years Kenny was involved in many local organizations including the Downtown Merchants Association, Main Street Christmas Committee, the city Transportation Committee, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Arts Cooperative Team. Currently he is active with the Hot Spring Area Cultural Alliance, Celebrate Maya Project, and P.H.O.E.B.E. Uzuri Youth Leadership Project. "You could say I settled down and made myself at home here," he said.
To say he settled down is not entirely accurate, though, the release said, as in 2001, with his then-wife Patricia and Della the mule, Kenny again hit the road on foot, this time headed for the coast of Maine. They arrived there two and a half years later. Della pulled a pack cart that generated electricity from the rotation of its wheels and a solar panel. The back of it opened as a stage. Along the way they produced poetry shows where they sold Kenny's poetry books that were printed on the cart. In the fall of 2015, he published a memoir about that journey titled "Footloose In America -- Dixie To New England." The book can be found online at http://www.amazon.com and at Kollective Coffee+Tea. It will be available Wednesday night following his performance.
"Mostly I am a narrative poet," Kenny said in the release. "I tell stories in verse. Often with meter and rhyme, but not always. What my poems always do have is a sense of rhythm. Down through the ages that has always been the consistent requirement for a poem. It must feel like it's moving -- going somewhere."
Poets who inspire Kenny include Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, Robert W. Service, Baxter Black and Taylor Mali. "Not only do their poems take you somewhere, they give you a solid place to land. That is what I try to do with my work."
Kenny was the first host of Wednesday Night Poetry on Feb. 1, 1989. WNP has not missed a Wednesday since then. "I can't take credit for that," he said. "The community has kept it going. Every time I decided to quit, someone stepped up and took over." Kenny became the host again in May 2015. It has been nearly four years since he has been the featured poet.
Kai Coggin will be the host for the evening.
Entertainment on 11/21/2017