Los Angeles poet, author, emeritus professor and classical flutist Donna Spruijt-Metz will be featured at Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee + Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The regular open mic session for all poets, musicians and storytellers will begin at 6:30 p.m. today. Spruijt-Metz will begin her feature set at 7:30 p.m., followed by another round of open mic. "Admission is free and open to all ages. All are welcome. WNP is a safe space," a news release said.
Spruijt-Metz has been a part of the Wednesday Night Poetry global virtual community since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. "This will be her first time attending WNP in person in historic downtown Hot Springs. The reading has become a destination spot for many nationally touring poets who were part of the online series over the last four years," the release said.
Born in Los Angeles with a 22-year stint in the Netherlands, Spruijt-Metz calls LA home now. "I am an emeritus professor of psychology and public health. I was a professor first at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and then for 25 years at the University of Southern California," she said in the release.
"Now I am a full-time poet. I love to read -- I would say that is my hobby -- and we have two Australian shepherds, Skye and Yra, which is either a hobby or a full-time job, depending on how you look at it!"
"I live with my husband, who is a visual artist (painting & drawing) and teaches at the Pasadena Art Center. We have one daughter who is now 33 and a Pulmonary Critical Care doctor, who is probably doing locums as we speak, in Arkansas" she said.
As far as her educational background, Spruijt-Metz said, "Well, I get restless. I have an MFA in Flute performance from California Institute of the Arts, an MFA in Flute pedagogy from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, a Master's in psychology from the University of Amsterdam, a Ph.D. in medical ethics and adolescent health from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and an MFA in creative writing from Otis College of Art and Design. I dropped out of rabbinical school, though."
Spruijt-Metz was featured in Poets & Writers Magazine, in an article entitled "5 Over 50," which highlights the journeys of authors making their debut after the age of 50 -- she was 72 when her debut was published. Her debut poetry collection "General Release from the Beginning of the World" was published in 2023 with Free Verse Editions. Her chapbooks include "Slippery Surfaces," "And Haunt the World" with Flower Conroy, and "Dear Ghost," winner of the 2023 Harbor Review Editor's Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Tahoma Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
"I first started writing poetry-like things when I was in the first grade -- a miserable, somewhat walleyed child in corrective shoes," Spruijt-Metz said.
"It was something that I could lose myself in and also get praise for. I wrote on and off all my life. I didn't take it seriously. It was second nature and in school in Orange County, there were no classes that even took poetry seriously. I started playing the flute when I was 19, which is really late if you want to play professionally, and realized the only way I could do that would be to go to the conservatory -- but I hadn't even been playing a year. I knew I would never get admitted. Cal Arts, at the time, allowed you to change majors without auditioning once you were accepted. So I pulled some poems together and applied as a poet. I was accepted (but STILL didn't take myself seriously) and changed majors to flute -- and did that professionally in the end for more than a decade," she said.
"When I moved to Holland to study flute with a real master, the culture shock just about took me down, and I wrote poetry to keep myself afloat. But I STILL didn't take myself seriously," she continued. "I played flute, then went to university to study psychology just for fun and only part-time. I ended up changing careers. Kept writing on and off. When we moved back to the States, a new rash of culture shock drove me back to it, and I finally ended up getting an MFA part-time while working as a full-time professor. I STILL didn't take myself seriously, but writing was just part of me and I realized I would always do it. In 2013, I went to Bread Loaf for the first time, where everyone took me and themselves as writers seriously. That finally woke me up," Spruijt-Metz said.
As far as what inspires her to write, Spruijt-Metz said, "Everything and nothing inspires me to write. Sometimes it is pain (from culture shock, horrors in our world, sometimes personal and sometimes more to do with the pain in the world), sometimes it is joy, sometimes it is the quiet I find by writing, sometimes it is music, sometimes it is art, sometimes it is scripture. It does change over time. I needed to write about my childhood -- that was what inspired me -- now I need to write about whatever you think of as Holy. It morphs. Poetry is a survival technique.
"Writing poetry is how I search for mercy. It is a listening for whatever mercy is on offer. But I am not always (or maybe not often) a 'good' listener. I flicker in and out of it, I forever have one ear cocked towards something else -- something beyond. I am pawing through the rubble of my days, trying to piece together the fragments, make sense of the partial signals. And poetry goes beyond being a 'listening.' For me, it is also a dialogue -- I am trying to set up a dialogue with -- with what? With whatever has the power to confer mercy -- holiness? The big G? The Name? The spirit? Maybe it is the earth? The conversation is sometimes irreverent. But I think that is OK. It has to be. I can't do it otherwise. I have questions."
Aside from that, for a long time, "I felt compelled to write about my dysfunctional family, trying to sort my childhood out. Not that it sorted, but I have been able to move away from that. These days I have been writing about the war in the Middle East," she said.
"My longtime favorite poets are Carl Phillips, Marie Howe, Yehoshua November, Dana Levin, Hans Lodeizen (he's Dutch), Yehuda Amachai, Michael Bazzett, and some of Ellen Bryant Voigt. My current heartthrobs: Jessica Jacobs, Philip Metres, some of Victoria Chang, and some of Gabrielle Calvocoressi."
Spruijt-Metz asked her daughter to help her with a few fun facts about herself, and her daughter said, "You were a bass player in a rock band that once played cover for Van Morrison. You lived on a commune and made fantastic strawberry shortcake. You still do not ride a bike despite living 20-plus years in Holland. You can drink your daughter under the table four times over. And you pioneered the use of mobile health technology in intervening in childhood obesity."
Spruijt-Metz says Wednesday Night Poetry "gave me COMMUNITY during the pandemic. I made friends through WNP that have become my backbone in the poetry world. My people. I met new poets, saw old friends, it was incredible. I am forever incredibly grateful to Kai for this. I have no words to express my gratitude."
"It is always such a tremendous joy for me when a poet who has only been a part of the sprawling global virtual WNP community makes the sojourn to historic downtown Hot Springs, to our humble little coffee shop, to feel Wednesday Night Poetry in person, in REAL LIFE," WNP Host and Hot Springs Poet Laureate Kai Coggin said in the release.
"Donna was a staple in the virtual readings I curated each week from 2020-2023, even featuring for us twice on that platform. I met her in person at the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference, and it was like being with family. I can't wait for her to experience WNP with us here in Hot Springs, and I feel like maybe her stint in the Netherlands tells me she would also love a trip to Garvan Gardens to see our 134,000 tulips in bloom. Donna is a sensitive and brave Light, a truth teller, a prayer, a beautiful poet. This is going to be a treat for our community -- two worlds colliding with poetry."
This week marks 1,834 consecutive Wednesdays of open mic poetry in downtown Hot Springs since Feb. 1, 1989, over 35 years ago. "Wednesday Night Poetry is the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country. For more information, email [email protected]."