Nick Weaver needs a theme song. His writing bursts with colors, angst and bite. A dust bowl poet howling through the digital loneliness, summoning his pack to sing and devour. And it’s only just begun.
– Idris Goodwin
Nick, as drawn by Natasha Alterici
Nick “The Dream” Weaver is my favorite poet. He’s not just in my top 5. He’s not my “favorite” with an asterisk. He’s not my favorite because he happens to be one of my dearest friends, nor is he my favorite Oklahoma poet, my favorite queer poet, or my favorite performance poet. Nick Weaver is my favorite poet – living, dead, or anything in between. Perhaps his words impact me so heavily because I know and love him, and because I can see pieces of him in his words. I recognize memories, stories, people, and the weight of familiar emotional struggles and epiphanies.
Ideas come to Nick at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night – he turns his head, eyes looking through us, through the wall, and into the void beyond. “Hey,” he’ll say, waving a hand across the space between us as if clearing off the chalkboard so he can begin a new equation, “do you guys ever think about how fucked up it is that…”
Inevitably, these ideas grow, coalesce, split, and flower into dialogues and torrents of thought that burst forth from his brain, like Athena from Zeus’ forehead, in the form of these complex, moving, and socially poignant bouquets of words that I can’t help but bury my face in, breathing deep, and think, “This smells like Nick. It’s saturated in Nick. It positively wreaks of Nick.” I love Nick, and I love his words. Nick Weaver is my favorite poet.
Sometime in 2014, when Nick was still actively performing and winning poetry contests and championships, he collected some of his finest work into a chapbook called “Deep Dark,” and had it illustrated by another of our dear friends, the amazingly talented Natasha Alterici. Four years have passed since then, and no matter how much I pushed, Nick wasn’t quite ready to share this collection with the world.
Somewhere along the way, that has changed. Nick is living in Chicago currently, no doubt completely unaware of the lives he’s impacting and the tales his weaving in his wake. On his most recent birthday, I gave him a copy of Deep Dark that I’d had printed specifically for that purpose, and asked him if I could finally use my platform, this website, to make his work available to everyone. He said yes. He was ready. You can read Deep Dark online, save it digitally, or print it. In fact, print 73 copies of it on your office printer and share it with anyone and everyone you know. Share it with people that love, people that hurt, and people that feel. Share it with people that love poetry, and those that don’t yet realize they do. Share it with kids who struggle, and adults who still feel like kids who struggle. Deep Dark is for everyone, because deep down, in that dark place all of us have, whether we’ve found it or not, there’s a strange animal crying out to be heard, and worried that no one can hear it, or worse, understand it. We all have that, and maybe if we bear that part of ourselves more openly, we can make it easier to connect with one another. This chapbook is Nick bearing that part of himself to the world, to you, and hoping that you can hear it. Nick Weaver is my favorite poet.
Click this link to enter the DEEP DARK
