ASMSA Japanese teacher featured during WNP

Submitted photo ASMSA TEACHER, POET: Betty Brown will be the featured poet at the 7 p.m. Wednesday Night Poetry event at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
Submitted photo ASMSA TEACHER, POET: Betty Brown will be the featured poet at the 7 p.m. Wednesday Night Poetry event at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.

Betty Brown, a teacher at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, will be featured during Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.

The open mic for all poets begins at 6:30 p.m., with Brown performing at 7 p.m., followed by a second round of open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.

A native of Michigan City, Ind., Brown started teaching Japanese at ASMSA last year. She received her bachelor's degree in Japanese Education from Ball State University with minors in German and English as a second language. After graduating from college, she spent a year teaching English in Germany through a Fulbright grant.

Learning Japanese helped Brown overcome severe social anxiety, a news release said. "Throughout my childhood, I was afraid to talk to anyone other than my family," she said. "Then in high school, I started taking Japanese and that teacher literally helped me find my voice. Learning Japanese brought me out of my shell."

Brown started writing poetry in college. "It was usually around 3 a.m., during sleep-deprived stupors. I would get these weird thoughts and ideas that I started writing down. And after a while, they came out sounding like poetry."

When asked what inspires her to write, she said, "It depends on where I am in life. Sometimes I have feelings that I write down or I'll have an interesting experience that turns into a poem. Then there are times when I'll just play with the language and try to break linguistic rules. Once in a while, I'll pretend to be a kid again and I'll write about that."

Brown's favorite poets include Shel Silverstein and Sylvia Plath.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Entertainment on 09/18/2018

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