Zaccheus Jackson kept a lot of poems in his head. He’d recite them to rapt audiences and share them with friends, but he didn’t always write them down.
That’s part of the resonating sadness of his unexpected death, say those close to the Vancouver-based poet and spoken word performer. Some of his great work has been lost with him.
“This is nothing short of an absolute tragedy,” said Magpie Ulysses, a friend and fellow wordsmith who knew the tall-framed, fast-talking poet since he started performing 10 years ago.
“He was just fully coming into his power.”
People close to Jackson have identified him as the man who was struck and killed by a three-locomotive train in west Toronto on Wednesday. He was 36.
Jackson’s death has rocked the Canadian spoken-word and slam poetry scene, a community of artists in which the Alberta-born man of Blackfoot descent rose to prominence through spirited performances, incisive wordplay both personal and political, delivered with characteristic lightning quickness.
“Every word he spoke was just this beautiful picture,” said Jillian Christmas, a close friend who described Jackson’s poetry as honest and raw, tracing hardships and sorrows — Jackson was homeless for years, did a short stint in jail and overcame an addiction to crack cocaine — yet never dwelling in pain or sadness.
“He’d never leave you in the darkness,” she said.
It remains unclear why Jackson was on the train tracks this week near Runnymede Rd. and Dundas St. W. Police are investigating the incident and have said there is no indication the man’s death was a suicide.
Jackson had been travelling after performing at an arts festival in Halifax. His last missive to the world was a photo, posted on Instagram, of himself sitting on the train tracks with a six pack of beer in the afternoon sun.
“Nobody could speak faster than him,” said Christmas. “His voice would just capture a room. It was a beautiful baritone that just shook the walls.”
Jackson was born in Brockett, an aboriginal community in southern Alberta. He was adopted at 6 weeks old by a Mormon family and moved to Terrace in northern B.C., Christmas said.
Later in his teens, Jackson got involved with drugs and lived on the streets in Calgary. His troubles persisted until 2005, in Vancouver, when he saw a sign in a café window on Commercial Dr. advertising a poetry slam contest.
As friend and fellow poet Brendan McLeod recalls, Jackson said he signed up because he had built up poems in his mind while on the street for years, and he also felt like “slamming something.”
In 2011, Jackson told the Calgary Herald: “Some people find God. Some people find health. Some people find tofu. People find all kinds of things. For me, I found spoken word. Poetry saved my life.”
Almost immediately upon entering the spoken-word poetry scene in Vancouver, Jackson started working with kids. He visited schools all across the city, aboriginal communities in northern B.C. and beyond, sharing stories about his past and performing his poems for wide-eyed kids, said McLeod, who toured with Jackson for the past decade.
“Nobody was cooler and more inspiring,” McLeod said of his late friend.
“He was the best arts educator I’d ever seen.”
A few weeks ago, Christmas said she was talking with Jackson about legacy. She told him she’d like her poems to become her legacy, while Jackson told her that helping young people was most important to him.
“The only thing he focused on was teaching the youth and making sure they felt empowered,” said Christmas.
“He really was one of the best people I ever met.”
Jackson’s family and friends will hold a memorial in Vancouver in the coming days, and will plan to set up an online campaign to help support the poet’s long-time partner.
Choice quotes from Jackson’s poems
“My goal is to one day write a rhyme worthy of the lines etched beneath the eyes of the elderly.”
“The fastest we live is still the slowest we die.”
“God knows Columbus needed no Moses to split the sea of my red people. He knew enough to just trust in the strength of the steeple, the breadth and length of cathedrals, God’s gospel-glossed needles.”
“A bit more than eight years ago, I decided to exchange my pipe for a pen, reclaim my life once again, stop waiting for all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to give rise to the moment when this no longer defines me. Now that mind frame’s behind me.”