'17 Spa City Slam winner featured at Wednesday Night Poetry

Cerna
Cerna

Costa Rican poet, musician, mental health advocate and 2017 winner of the Spa City Slam, Noelia Cerna, 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 will begin at 6:30 p.m. Cerna will begin at 7 p.m., followed by another round of open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.

A first-generation immigrant born in Alajuela, Costa Rica, and now living in Fayetteville, Cerna works full-time as an office manager and part-time as both a piano teacher and a crisis intervention specialist.

"She is a rape survivor and has been helping other survivors find their voice through crisis intervention with the Arkansas Crisis Center and the Crisis Text Line, and by telling her story through poetry," a news release said.

She also uses her poetry to discuss and de-stigmatize mental health illnesses such as depression and anxiety, which she has struggled with since she was young, the release said.

Cerna has been answering the crisis line with the Arkansas Crisis Center for a decade. Cerna earned her bachelor's degree in English/Creative Writing from Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., and has considered herself a writer from most of her life.

"I started seriously writing poetry in the eighth grade. Our English teacher introduced an emergency poetry unit after the suicide of one of our classmates and the sudden death of another classmate in a car accident happened within two weeks and left us all reeling. Poetry has been saving my life and pulling me back from the darkness ever since," she said in the release.

"Cerna's poetry focuses on topics such as divorce, loss, depression, suicide, racism, being a woman, being a rape survivor, family, and feelings of not belonging. Lately, she has been writing a lot of poetry centered around being a first-generation immigrant, a bilingual Spanish speaker, and a woman of color in the United States," the release said.

"This powerful Latina poet has been making waves in the poetry slam scene of northwest Arkansas for many years now and has made a name for herself as a leader and powerful voice in the poetry community of the state. She has featured and performed at the University of Arkansas, Open Mouth Reading Series, Ozark Poets and Writers Collective, Northwest Arkansas Community College, Guillermo's Poetry & Prose, WNP, and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. She was also recently the keynote speaker for the Northwest Arkansas Center for Sexual Assault in June," the release said.

"I am inspired by abandoned buildings with trees and flowers growing from their foundations and through their roofs. I am inspired by resilience. I want people to feel hope after hearing me," she said.

This week marks 1,595 consecutive Wednesdays of open mic poetry in downtown Hot Springs since Feb. 1, 1989. Email the host, Kai Coggin, at [email protected] for more information.

Entertainment on 08/20/2019

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