Wednesday Night Poetry to host TX poet

Austin, Texas, poet Justin Booth 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 Booth will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.

According to a news release, Booth grew up around Black Oak in the northeast part of Arkansas. He served in the Arkansas National Guard and was a bricklayer before he became homeless in 2007.

"That's when I started writing poetry," Booth said. "I was strung out and living in the streets of Little Rock. Then I started writing about it, and the poems came out like short narratives. They were like snapshots of my life and how I felt about it."

At first Booth kept the poems to himself. "I figured nobody wanted to hear that kind of stuff from a bum in the street. Then I found out about the Poet's Roundtable, and I went to one of their monthly meetings in Little Rock. When I walked in, I thought, 'This is not going to work out.' They were all old teacher types -- mostly white-haired women. I figured they wouldn't want anything to do with the likes of me. But they were so accepting and supportive of me and my work. I left there feeling like I had a whole new purpose in my life: poetry!"

The roundtable poets invited Booth back, and he took them up on the invitation. "They would bring me soap and food and pens and paper. I can truly say those people and poetry saved my life." He credits Hot Springs poet Steve Manning as one of his most enthusiastic supporters. "That man taught me so much. He will always be one of my heroes."

Booth quit living on the streets over six years ago and has published five books of his poetry. A year and a half ago, he moved to Austin. "I had performed at all the Little Rock venues several times and sold lots of books. I figured the Little Rock crowd was probably getting tired of seeing me. So I moved to new territory."

He describes his work as "outlaw poetry."

"My poems don't fit any other category I can think of. They are like something that doesn't fit in any other designated drawer, so you throw it in the junk drawer," he said.

One of Booth's goals when he got off the streets was to read at Wednesday Night Poetry. "I had heard so much about it. R.J. Looney and Chuck Dodson helped me do that, and I read the last night it was held at Maxine's," he said. "So I'm really excited about being the feature again this Wednesday night."

Copies of Booth's books will be available Wednesday night at Kollective Coffee+Tea.