http://www.sandiegowriters.org/september-politics-election-day-poetry-jim-moreno/

https://secure.sandiegowriters.org/eventReg.jsp?event=12565&

There will be 44 days until the election when this poem-making workshop is facilitated by Jim Moreno. Are you registered to vote yet? Did you know a provisional ballet is not counted? Did you know you have until October 21^st to register? Did you know that when you vote November 3, 2020 you can defeat the consciousness of voting suppressors, electronic lynchers, ballet bandits, racial vote suppressor tricksters of bigotry in balloting.

Interested poets are reminded that this is not a critique group. It’s a poetry writing experience set in a Container of respect for all participants. Especially if you are looking for your America of equality at the ballot box. On account of our nonprofit status we cannot offer you a workshop which is a soapbox for any given candidate. We can offer intelligent, cogent, poetry and film clips which embrace the American ideals of freedom, equality and justice.

We will again delve into the consciousness of Civil Rights Era poet Sonia Sanchez: This is a love that crowns the feet with hands that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails mends the children, folds them inside our history where they toast more than the flesh where they suck the bones of the alphabet and spit out closed vowels. This is a love colored with iron and lace.

Moreno: “I have heard voices from the shadows who criticize political poetry. Those voices say there is no room for politics in poetry. I guess they have never read Sanchez, Siegfried Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen. Maybe they never heard of June Jordan: Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth. Perhaps those voices don’t have a computer?”

Without a computer one can’t google poets.org and read: Political poetry is poetry that is related to activism, protest, and social concern, or that is commenting on social, political, or current events. Read poems for social justice, politics, Black Lives Matter, and protest…Political poetry, ancient and modern, good and bad, frequently responds vehemently to social injustice, e.g. Jessie Redmon Fauset, literary editor of The Crisis, played a crucial role in the Harlem Renaissance. Jimmy Santiago Baca, the late Steve Kowit, and hip hop poets Bennie Herron, Rudy Francisco, Ant Black, & Natasha Hooper stand and deliver the political voice.

Nobel Prize poet Pablo Neruda reminded us the role of the poet is to be the voice for the voiceless. Jim Moreno hopes that the poems composed in this workshop are not limited to that genre but most certainly can be counted as part of the heart of this poetry workshop. For beginning or seasoned poets.

Jim Moreno is the author of Dancing in Dissent: Poetry For Activism (Dolphin Calling Press, 2007) and two cd’s of poetry & music. He is a Teaching Artist & on the Program Committee of San Diego Writers, Ink. As Jim Hornsby, M.A., he is on the Advisory Board of the Poetic Medicine Institute in Palo Alto, California. Jim enjoys serving as a Regional Editor with the San Diego Poetry Annual. Mr. Moreno is a Teaching Artist with Arts For Learning where he was voted the Residency Teaching Artist of the Year in 2016-17. Moreno serves as the Poet-In-Residence for Mid City Community Music where he teaches poetry to adjudicated youth. Jim also instructs poetry in Juvenile Hall where his incarcerated students have won over $1700 in publishing and contest awards since 2007. 65 of his adolescent students are published in this year’s edition of the San Diego Poetry Annual, 2019-20. Jim hosts 2nd Sunday Jihmye Poetry Open Mic at The Spacebar Cafe & Wine Bistro, an open mic for music and spoken word in La Mesa that is now online until the Covid-19 pandemic subsides. He launched his new website www.jimmorenopoetryclasses.com on July 4, 2019. Contact Jim at [email protected], www.jimpoet.com, or Instagram.