For Immediate Release / April 6, 2023
Ari Zak
Ari Zak’s first steps in poetry led her up to a microphone.
She was in grade nine, and a friend had invited her out to an open mic night. I was trying to impress this friend,” Zak recalls. “So we went up at the open mic. I did not have a poem prepared, of course, but I decided to just try to freeverse one.”
She’s happy that there doesn’t seem to be any existing footage of that first public foray into poetry—it happened just before smartphones were truly pervasive. But something about the experience, and the room’s accepting response, piqued Zak’s interest in the medium.
“I knew it wasn't a good poem,” she says. “But the community was always very welcoming around sharing things off the cuff. That initial encouragement made me feel like this might be a space I can really kind of get into. It definitely stopped with a lot of the nervousness that comes with approaching a new art form.”
Shortly after, Zak joined a poetry club in high school—the St. Albert Rose Kane Poets, or S.T.A.R.K., poets—and as part of that STARK performing team, helped win the 2016 Alberta Poetry Slam. Now, Zak’s established her voice in the medium: she’s run open mics, performed at the Amplify Festival, the St Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts, and SkirtsAFire Festival, released a few chapbooks and audio recordings of her works, and, currently, is picking a way at a large-scale project.
Zak describes her styles as “melancholic,” often writing about events a few years after they’ve happened.
“I feel like time has this almost negating quality on things,” she says. “Sometimes I'll write about an event like three or four years on … I think back to how I felt at the time, and how I feel about it now, and it's just these two completely different worlds.
“If I write something fresh, off the cuff of something that happens, it tends to be a very dramatized thing,” Zak continues. “If I write a few years later, then the melancholy kicks in. So it's just kind of a different scope of experiences.”
One of the rewarding experiences Zak herself has had with poetry has been getting the opportunity to mentor the very S.T.A.R.K. poets she was once a part of: supporting the next generation of poets as they find their voices.
“I think poetry is a very community-driven thing,” she says. “So being able to get back to the community in that sense has been really rewarding.”
See Ari Zak perform her poetry at Amplify Poetry Open Mic Night on May 17, 7 p.m. at Confections Cake Co. Young creatives are encouraged to sign up and perform!
- 30 -Related Pages
Last edited: June 6, 2023