crucial – transforming lives through words
photo by steed media service |
Spoken Word Artist, Leader of the Panoramic Poets
To a wondrous word wizard like Crucial, poetry is much more than masterful arrangements of fancy words that titillate the sensibilities. For Crucial, poetry is as critical to his existence as oxygen. Poetry flows through Crucial’s veins like nutrients. Poetry uplifts, empowers and restores this spirited speech specialist. He can no more divorce himself from the art form, than he could slide out of his own skin. And while he has ridden poetry like a magic carpet ride, traveling across the country, Crucial’s words have traveled even farther, traversing great oceans and touching lives in other nations. Crucial’s audiences experience his linguistic powers as he hosts Panoramic Poetry every second and third Fridays.
“I have a verse in a poem called ‘What if poetry was a crime?’ I need this poetry in order to survive. Because without this written and verbal art, a part of me deep inside … would die,” he says, adding that poetry provides a serene sanctuary from which he gains refuge and reprieve from an adversarial world. “Poetry is a major part of me. Without it, I might go insane. That’s real.”
It’s almost too real for Crucial to think that, through this transformational vehicle called poetry, his work is published in college books that students study in classrooms in other countries. “I get responses from professors and students and they tell me they dig my style and my flavor,” he says. Crucial earned his memorable moniker from his penchant for setting off so many emotional fireworks on stage. Now another venue, Wesley AME Zion Church, gets to experience this indoor lightning every first Saturday. Folks wanting to speak at his shows can e-mail him at[email protected]. or visit www.myspace.com/crucialpoet. – terry shropshire
