Zaru Jonson
Freelance writer and performer in Cardiff, United Kingdom
Zaru Jonson has been developing his yowling blend of cascading poetry and rap since seeing a beetle repeatedly attempt to drown itself in an Italian swimming pool in the Summer of 2007. During his first term at Cardiff Met in 2009, he was awarded the second place and audience vote prizes at Literature Wales' John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, and has spent his time since then emitting sounds for anyone who'll listen, consuming books, and thinking about God, humans, and modern animal totemism. He tends to claim either canine or simian loyalties.
Published in Burning Eye's 2012 anthology, Rhyming Thunder: The Alternative Book of Young Poets,and fresh from several months in Canada picking hazelnuts and walking catahoulas, Zaru longs to fill your venue with intricate, rhyming strings of offkilter lamentations and blessings.
Past performances have included:
Jam Bones (Cardiff)
Balloon (Cardiff)
POETica (Bangor)
The Absurd (Mold)
Beyond Borders (Aberystwyth)
The Newport Folk Collective
HelDinky Presents: (Bangor)
Brizzlemania (Bristol)
Word Life (Bradford)
The Trip Festival 2010
Literature Wales' BayLit festival 2010
Bearded Theory 2011
- - (as part of the Something Else Tea Tent)
the Cheltenham Poetry Festival 2012
the Dinefwr Literature Festival
the PBH Edinburgh Free Fringe
- - (as part of Martin Daws' wordjazz ensemble)
100,000 Poets For Change
- - (Cardiff leg, headlined by Labi Siffre)
Elysium Gallery's Disruption 2 (Swansea)
Dirtbox II (Cardiff)
Hand of Roath (Cardiff)
the severely blessed TOMMY'S POETRY NIGHTS
Exhibition openings at Tactile BOSCH & with the nonstoppedly mindbending MODERN ALCHEMISTS collective
the Cardiff Vs. Swansea OXSLAM events