From Sean McGarragle:
On April 19th, The Vancouver Poetry House will be playing host to annual Vancouver Slam Poetry Finals where we will decide who our four team members and one alternate will be for the coming year. These five individuals will represent Vancouver on a global stage taking part in the National Poetry Slam in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (Canadian Nationals) in Ottawa, Ontario and other local and international tournaments and festivals.This is the show that all of our season, all the poets and organizers work toward. This is our deciding show for the year. And featuring at this year's Grand Slam Finals will be Joaquín Zihuatanejo.
Joaquín Zihuatanejo is a poet, spoken word artist, and award-winning teacher. Born and raised in the barrio of East Dallas, in his work Joaquín strives to capture the duality of the Chicano culture. Sometimes brutal, but always honest his work depicts the essence of barrio life, writing about a youth that existed somewhere between the streets of the barrio and the dream wanderings of a boy who found refuge in a world of stories and poems.
Joaquín has been called by critics, “one of the most dynamic and passionate performance poets in the country, melding equal parts comedy, poetry, and dramatic monologue into a crowd-pleasing display of verbal fireworks…always thrilling, Joaquín’s hilariously manic presentation is full of compassion and nuance, never sacrificing substance for style, leading many to call him poetry slam’s answer to John Leguizamo.”
A National Poetry Slam Finalist, Grand Slam Spoken Word Champion, and HBO Def Poet, Joaquín has performed his poetry at universities, conferences and poetry slams all over the Unites States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.
In 2005, Joaquin was featured on season five of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry for HBO. Filmed in front of a live audience at the majestic Supper Club Theater just off Broadway in New York City, Joaquin performed in front of a capacity crowd and received a standing ovation for his performance. For seven years Joaquín was an award-winning English and creative writing public high school teacher for ninth and eleventh grade students inspiring a new collection of poems from the classroom entitled Stand Up and Be Heard.
For the last three years Joaquin has taken a break from his teaching position to tour North America and Europe teaching workshops and performing his one man spoken word show at hundreds of colleges, universities, conferences and poetry slams. In his extensive journey as a professional performance poet, Joaquin has shared a stage with Billy Collins, Saul Williams, E. Lynn Harris, Alicia Keys, and Maya Angelou among others. He recently co-wrote and produced of fire and rain, a CD that is a spoken word collaboration with award-winning poet, Natasha Carrizosa. The project has been described as a testimony of life/love that spans from the barrios of East Dallas to the ghettos of the West Indies.
Selections from of fire and rain were selected by Poetry in Motion to be published on posters on DART buses, light rail, and trains throughout the greater Dallas area—the Poetry In Motion series attempts to capture the work of modern American poets alongside the work of the masters, other poets in this series included Wallace Stevens, Anne Bradstreet, and Seamus Heaney.
Joaquín recently won the 2008-2009 Individual World Poetry Slam Championship besting 77 poets representing cities all over North America, France and Australia. Because of his victory, Joaquín received a book deal with Wordsmith Press, to be published in the fall of 2009. Also, because of this victory Joaquín was the poet chosen to represent the U.S. at the 2009 World Cup of Poetry Slam in Paris, France in June, a competition that he won besting 13 poets from 13 different nations making him the number one ranked slam poet in the world on both sides of the Atlantic. He currently lives just north of his hometown of Dallas with his wife and two daughters. Joaquín has two passions in his life, his wife, Aída, and poetry, always in that order.
Where: The Rio Theatre, 1660 East Broadway (Broadway Avenue & Commercial Drive)
Doors for the show will open at 7:00 PM
The show starts at 8:00 PM
Tickets will be
$15 at the door
$12 in advance
$10 for groups of 10 or more
$10 for kids (under the age of 18) or senior citizens (65+)
Please forward this event on to any and all interested parties. Last year we sold out the Rio, this year we're hoping for more of the same so get your tickets early, they'll be available for purchase starting at the Wowps qualifier on January 11th. Hope to see you all there.
Sean
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