Cultural Circle Poetry Workshops

Welcome to jimpoet.com

When We Create Poetry Community We Support One Another make sure you visit these venues and bring a poem to read or a pen to write.
2nd Sunday Jihmye Poetry- Open Mic

Welcome to Jim Poet.com

2nd Sunday – Jihmye Poetry – Open Mic 04/11/21
Our Feature Is Anjuli Nunn
2nd Sunday is in solidarity with 100,000 Poets For Change, The San Diego/Tijuana Chapter of the ReEvolutionary Poets Brigade, Black Lives Matter, Seed the Vote, The New Georgia Project, The World Beat Center & Activist San Diego.

Friday, April 23, 2021, 7:00 PM on Zoom

Stolen Lives: A Memoriam for Black Lives Matter

Fifth from the bottom on the menu to your right.

The San Diego/Tijuana ReEvolutionary Poets Brigade

Jim Moreno is an Artist-in-Residence...

teaching poetry with Arts 4 Learning since 2005. Jim was an original member and coordinator of San Diego’s Langston Hughes Poetry Circle and a board member of the African American Writers & Artists. Moreno was also the director of the Encanto Boys and Girls Club Children’s Poetry Choir and the Language Arts teacher at the All Tribes American Indian Charter School on Rincon Reservation. Since August of 2005 he has served as the Poet-In-Residence for the Juvenile Court & Community Schools where he teaches poetry workshops for at-risk youth in lockups and community schools and is currently between contracts. 63 of his students have been published in the Inbetween Places newsletter, a publication for the homeless. Each of those students were awarded $10.00 for their poetry. 44 of Moreno’s students were published in the San Diego Poetry Annual’s 2015 edition. 6 of his students have won first place awards in a county-wide Poetry for Peace contest sponsored by the San Diego Peace Resource Center. Each student was awarded $100.00. Publishing and award monies for his students have added up to over $1500.00 since 2007.. Another student won first place in a state-wide playwright contest. She wrote the play in her cell in Juvenile Hall. The award winnng one-act play was performed in a local theater. She had never seen a play before in her young life. The 2016-2017 edition of the San Diego Poetry Annual saw 42 of Jim’s incarcerated students have 49 poems published. As the Regional Editor for Native American poetry, Moreno was able to help 14 Indian poets publish 20 poems. Some of those students were enrolled at the All Tribes American Indian Charter School where Moreno first taught Language Arts in 2002. Moreno revisited the school and facilitated a poetry workshop for the students. Jim Moreno was voted the Arts 4 Learning Residency Teacher of the Year for the 2016-2017 school year.

Mr. Moreno has been a guest poetry teacher at St. Elmo’s Village in Los Angeles, the Heman B. Stark Branch of the California Youth Authority, Los Coyotes Reservation, Chula Vista High School, Crawford High School, The Grauer School in Encinitas, The Vista Buddhist Temple, Southwestern College, the Magee Park Poets in Carlsbad, California, the Point Loma Arts Academy, Explorer Charter School, and the CalSAC Statewide Conference. Jim Moreno has been published in City Works, The Langston Hughes Poetry Anthology, The Magee Park Poets Anthology, the poetry conspiracy, Tidepools, The San Diego Poetry Annual, and others.

Jim has performed with The Three Deuces, a three art ensemble with jazz trumpeter Mitch Manker and dancer Michael Tompkins. He authored Dancing in Dissent: Poetry For Activism (Dolphin Calling Press, 2007). As Jim Hornsby he serves on the advisory board of the Poetic Medicine Institute. He recently featured with Institute president John Fox at the Encinitas Library. He is the co-host with painter/poet Jihmye Collins of 2nd Tuesday – Jihmye Poetry, an open mic poetry gathering at the Cafe Cabaret at 3739 Adams Ave., in Normal Heights. He has read his original verse at poetry venues from Seattle to Orlando. Moreno is a Regional Editor for the 2014-2015 San Diego Poetry Annual. Jim won first place at The People’s Choice poetry competion at the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park reciting his original poem “Strange Fruit & Other Public Executions” He was competing with 9 other poets.

Moreno states firmly that he is proud to be an adopted member of the Barbareno Chumash tribe. He was adopted by his brother John Moreno, a Chumash elder, painter, storyteller, and singer in a ceremony in the spring of 1995 in Lomita, California. His mother, Rosie (Nani) Moreno was a Tohono O’dham, Pima, Mexican, Irish elder who inspired those around her to sing with life.

Jim’s birth mother, Miriam Hess, was a talented story teller, traveler, and musician who played the piano and organ. Moreno attributes his writing talent to the storytelling talents of his mother and his two sisters, Barbara and Sheila. “I grew up listening to my mom and my sisters tell great stories during the day, at meals, and at night. I left home at 18 to begin a life of collecting my own stories. That’s what you will find in my poetry.”

Carbon-Mining in City Heights

a“…sickness had arrived like a thief in the night, an illness that brought fevers and raspy coughs until soon death had grown more ruthless. They told us it would soon be over, that we would all be well in no time.”

Imbolo Mbue, a Cameroon novelist from her book How Beautiful We Were to be launched in March, 2021.

MotherEarth your brow is drenched

in perspiration

wet with sweat,

skin hot to the touch

& the icecap is melting.

The suits say that’s a lie

they avert their glance from fevers,

from children in cages,

from water they’ve soiled in Detroit,

When they ignore these things

its a sickness of their minds,

a poverty of their souls.

So many of them sicken the Senate.

One clod flew to Cancun when

Texas was frozen in ice and snow.

They only see their wallets,

to all else― they are blind.

Howka, Haku, Aloha, Waca’, say

the Kumeyaay, my Chumash,

Hawaiians, the Eskimo.

All indigenous are teaching

that our relatives are dying

or are being rubbed out, gone,

Erased…

like the wrong end of a pirate pencil

balancing bogus books.

The scientists said there were too many elephants.

pachyderms were eating forests into deserts;

so they shot 40,000 elephants and then those

men in white coats discovered they were wrong.

The forests kept turning into deserts when the huge

relatives were gone.

One biologist finally said, “We were wrong.”

We didn’t have to erase Mother Earth’s

Huge Children.

And the cockatoo cried,

“Damn right you were wrong!”

MotherEarth you are feverous― the

relatives with fins are being caught in

miles of plastic choking the sea: the dolphins,

the tunas, the sharks, the salmon, the rays.

MotherEarth there is salt in the sea

from your tears, so many tears.

MotherEarth I can hear your

tears touch small stones

left from fracking.

MotherEarth I am carbon-farming

in my front yard in City Heights.

I’ve planted bamboo which absorbs coal,

AKA CO2.

I can hear moonlight flow in silver water

down the hill.The moonlight’s song is

the ancestors’ melody.The words to the song

Warn―

The ancestors sing the ancient song

of the willow and the oak.

Great Spirit, Great Mystery, Tunkashila,

Kopkanupmawa, The Mystery Behind the Sun.

help us bend like the willow and not break like the oak

when that strongest tree is uprooted

or breaks in the hot or cold wind,

the cold wind of lonely

or the hot wind of revenge.

Help us to bend like the willow,

The deep song that MotherEarth.sings.

Jim Moreno, Winter 2021