Astrophysics professor, slam poet featured at WNP

Submitted photo FEATURED POET: Astrophysics professor and slam poet Doug Shields will be featured this week at Wednesday Night Poetry.
Submitted photo FEATURED POET: Astrophysics professor and slam poet Doug Shields will be featured this week at Wednesday Night Poetry.

Astrophysics professor and slam poet Doug Shields will be featured this week at Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.

The regular open mic session for all poets begins at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. Shields will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.

A member of the charter graduating class of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and Arts in 1995, Shields went on to earn his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. His graduate studies centered around black holes. He currently teaches astronomy at North West Community College.

While his work and studies are in the sciences, Shields' passion is poetry. He first started writing in the ninth grade when his family moved from Kansas to Harrison in the late 1980s.

"I couldn't believe my mother brought me to a place where they celebrate the KKK," Shields said in a news release. "So my first poems were all about being an out-of-place, misunderstood, tortured teenager -- really dark stuff."

These days, Shields sees poetry "as a playground. A place to go and throw words on the wall and see what sticks. I like to just slop out words and see where they take me. I wish more poetry fans would just go along for the ride and not worry about the meaning."

Shields founded the Southmore Poetry Slam in Houston and served as Slam Master of The Ozarks for several years. From 2007 to 2013, he produced and hosted a weekly spoken word radio program on KXUA-FM in Fayetteville called "High On Words Radio."

He now produces and hosts a weekly radio program on KPSQ called "Poetize The News," which has been broadcast on Pacifica Radio and on KUHS in Hot Springs.

"My purpose with the show is give the listener a poetic, hopefully uplifting, light hearted perspective of what is going on in the world," he said.

Shields said he is interested in featuring other poets who are producing work appropriate for the program.

In 1993, Shields' perspective about poetry and life changed when he moved to Hot Springs to be a student at ASMSA.

"Every Wednesday night Rebecca Ragland would come to the school and walk us down to Magee's Cafe for the poetry readings. As obnoxious as we kids were, they always made us feel welcome," he said. " That's where I learned to turn that obnoxious energy into words to lift people up. Wednesday Night Poetry had a profound effect on my life."

Shield, who was nominated for the Push Cart Prize in 2004, has been published in numerous journals and published 10 books of his poetry. In 2015, Saltimbanque Books released a volume of Shields' satirical short stories titled Benjamin Golden Devilhorns.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Entertainment on 12/18/2018

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