Southwest Shootout 2014 Workshop - Write About What You Feel. Spit What You Know

DiverseWorks and Houston VIP Poetry Slam present the Southwest Shootout 2014, June 13 & 14.  The Southwest Shootout is a regional poetry slam tournament and showcase with artists representing the greater Southwest United States.

Featuring teams from Albuquerque Poetry Slam, Red Dirt Poetry Slam (Oklahoma City, OK), Meta-four Houston, Eclectic Truth (Baton Rouge, LA), Austin Neo-Soul, Backup Plan (Baton Rouge, LA), Austin Poetry Slam (Austin, TX), UrbSLAM (St. Louis, MO), Laredo Border Slam, Dallas Poetry Slam, Team Gravy Poetry Slam (Killeen, TX), The Blah Blah Blah Poetry Spot (San Antonio, TX), The Lafayette National Poetry Slam Team, Mic Check (Bryan, TX), Slamarillo (Amarillo, TX), Slam New Orleans, and Houston VIP Slam.

Friday, June 13, 3pm
Workshop – Write About What You Feel. Spit What You Know

In this interactive workshop lead by Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and World Cup of Poetry Slam Champion, Joaquin Zihuatanejo (pictured), we will look at ways to combine the two elements that go into making a strong slam poem or performance piece.

The two words that make up our craft are, slam, which we associate with performance and poetry, which we associate with writing. In this workshop, poets will focus on both of these aspects. Through interactive exercises we will hone our crafts as performers and writers, remembering that we owe it to our audiences to be as effective with one as we are with the other. Workshops participants will need pen or pencil, paper, and a cellular device.

Through writing, performance, instruction, sharing, and feedback, we will use this workshop to grow as performers and poets.

Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a father, a husband, a poet, a spoken word artist, and an award-winning teacher. He was born and raised in the barrio of East Dallas where his grandfather, Silas C. Medina, showed him what the novelist, Rudolfo Anaya, describes as the Path of Light. Through his poetry he strives to capture the duality of his culture, the Chicano culture.

His is a mestizo culture that is steeped in duality, and in his poetry he depicts the essence of barrio life, writing about subjects as varied as his grandfather’s garden, the experiences of a youth that was plagued by gang violence, a heritage that is steeped in sacrifice, and borders. He writes of borders that are both actual and metaphorical, borders that plague a people seen as immigrants in their own homeland.

Joaquín is a member of the 2004 Dallas Poetry Slam Team and current Grand Slam Spoken Word Poetry Champion of Dallas. Joaquín and Dallas Slam placed third out of sixty competing teams from the United States, Canada, and the UK at the 2004 National Poetry Slam competition in St. Louis. He performs his work at various conferences, poetry recitals, and poetry slams throughout the country.

He will be touring the East Coast this fall including a feature performance at the prestigious poetry venue, The Nuyorican Poets Café, founded and made famous by legendary poet and playwright Miguel Piñero. He recently competed in the Step to the Mic Spoken Word Competition in Stockton, California finishing in the top ten out of some 100 competing poets.

As well as being a featured poet at the Austin International PoetryFestival last April, Joaquín’s work was published in the 2004 Di-verse-CityPoetry Anthology. He has been the keynote speaker/performer at several conferences related to issues concerning Mexican Americans. He has self-published two collections of poetry, Barrio Songs and I of the Storm and has just completed his first spoken word CD, Barrio Songs, A Spoken Word Collection. He has had the privilege of being selected as the poet to open up for award winning poetand novelists Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris at their recent recitals at universities in the North Texas area.

Joaquín currently lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife Aída, his two daughters, Aiyana and Dakota, and their two guinea pigs, Pancho and Cisco.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/events/1398600123723342/

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/houstonvipslam

This project is funded by a grant from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.