It was at church when he was 3 years old that award-winning poet and filmmaker Seth-Adrian Harris fell in love with poetry.

"My grandmother would pray and chant so hard that, at a certain point, all I heard were incantations erupt and swing her body in motions befitting her bellows," says Harris. "I remember thinking that she was hurting, while at the same time I was very aware of her joy, both before and after these spells. My grandmother made me realize the poetry of life through her joys and pains of worship."

Harris, though, never fully appreciated the art of poetry until he was in the 10th grade at C.W. Jeffreys high school in North York. His English teacher Terry Shiels taught him that poetry is not limited to the page, stage or age.

"He would say you don't have to write 'a fat cat sat on a match,'" Harris says. "But you may consider drawing an obese "fat," the whiskers of a cat, and a flaming match stick. It was in his class that I realized that writing could be fun and relevant."

As fun and relevant as writing poetry was for Harris, it was something he never took seriously as a career until one night he found himself partying at a club on Richmond Street.

"It was at an after-hours warehouse party in the mid 1980s," remembers Harris. "That was the first time I first heard Mutabaruka's Dis Poem. And I'm telling you, that poetic lick just aligned my 'intrabilities' with what it was I needed to do with the poetry that was sleeping within my soul."

Continue purging

Harris decided at that point he wanted to pursue a career as a poet and spoken-word artist, but he didn't share his dreams with his family.

"Truth is, I didn't expect my family to understand what I was doing mainly because I wasn't altogether sure of what I was doing," Harris says. "But I was always certain that I had to continue purging and re-working the writing that was coming out simply because it felt so damn good!"

About a year after graduating from high school, Harris moved to Vancouver to "write, explore and expose" himself as a poet. What he found was that he also had a talent for film.

"I was in a strange and harsh situation that somehow provided an opportunity to actually make films," Harris says. "I was living on the streets in the lower eastside of downtown Vancouver. I'd spend my days begging for change and I managed to hustle up some cash to buy a cheap little second-hand 8mm video camera from a guy who was virtually giving it away. I was planning to sell the camera to make a little profit but for some reason I couldn't get anyone to buy it, so I kept it.

"I didn't know anything about video technology and had to basically teach myself what all the functions were. Within no time, I was shooting these gritty little street videos with my friends who were also living on the street."

Can't shake

Harris has since written, directed and produced more than two dozen visual poems and documentaries. His work, which has been described as "visceral manifestos of the black experience," has been shown in art galleries across Canada, including Gallery 61 in Toronto and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

"It's only in the last six years that my family finally came to terms with the fact that I'll be the only one without a pension," Harris says.

But he says the need to create poetry is something he can't shake. "I transcribe the voices in my head," says Harris. "That is worship to me and it is no different from the joys and pains, laughing and crying, wailing and screaming flesh onto souls that my grandmother showed me during those early years in Jamaica."

Seth-Adrian Harris is currently in production with a film series called "Realities & Real Ties." The series is made up of three films that will premiere at the National Film Board Cinema. The first film in the series, "Movin Up The Railroad," premieres Saturday, April 16. For more info, visit www.seth-adrianharris.com.