Poet, filmmaker, author and director of DecARcerate, Zachary Crow, will be featured tonight at 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. Crow will begin his feature set at 7:15 p.m., followed by another round of open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
Crow was born in Tulsa, Okla., and at 3 years old moved to Arkansas with his family. "With his bachelor's in Mass Communication from Harding University, he currently lives and works in Little Rock, and is an active member of several organizations that strive for social justice reform, recently lending his voice and energy to the movement led by Sen. Joyce Elliot, Rep. Tippi McCullough, and 2019 Arkansas State Teacher of the Year Stacy McAdoo calling for One Little Rock School District. Crow has always had a passion for social justice work and gives his voice to those who are underrepresented or without a platform from which to speak," a news release said.
In 2017, he was named the director of DecARcerate, a nonprofit working to end mass incarceration in Arkansas through education, smart legislation, and community action.
"Crow has extensive experience advocating for incarcerated individuals and working against mass incarceration and the death penalty on the grassroots level. Backed by extensive data and hours of personal interviews with inmates and their families, he has been working on a documentary film called 'Pipeline' that highlights the systemic way in which people of color are more prone to be targets of the 'cradle to prison pipeline' in Arkansas, particularly as it relates to school discipline and juvenile detention," the release said.
"Today, Arkansas has the highest rate of incarceration in the world," Crow said in the release.
To fund the film, Crow has hosted a number of poetry readings called "Inside Out" in which Arkansas poets, including the recently deceased WNP founder Bud Kenny, 36ix The Karbon Theorist, Kai Coggin, Karen Hayes, Gensu Lung'aho, Noelia Cerna, and Crystal C. Mercer, performed poems written by incarcerated poets locked inside Arkansas prisons.
"I first started writing poetry while living in Atlanta, Ga., at the Open Door Community. The Open Door Community is a residential community in the Catholic Worker tradition seeking to dismantle racism, sexism, abolish the death penalty, and proclaim the Beloved Community through loving relationships with some of the most neglected and outcast of God's children: the homeless, and our sisters and brothers who are in prison," Crow said.
Crow won the 2018 Spa City Slam during Arts & the Park, a first-place prize of $300.
This will be Crow's third time to feature at WNP. "Zach's work transports you to the soul of the piece, whether inside the prison cell or inside an aching heart, he will bring you there with urgency and beauty that is only his own," Coggin said in the release.
The first full-length book of his poetry, "Dancing In The Eddies," was released last year. Written in 34 parts, Crow describes it as an autobiographical examination of birth, death, love, loss, and the danger of being in the wake of dismantled dreams.
This week marks 1,603 consecutive Wednesdays of open mic poetry in downtown Hot Springs since Feb. 1, 1989. Email [email protected] for more information.
Entertainment on 10/16/2019