An American Poet in France

This summer Dallas local Joaquin Zihuatanejo traveled to France to compete in the World Poetry Slam Competition. As part of his travels, Joaquin agreed to write a few articles detailing his experience, below is the first of these articles.

An American Poet in France

by Joaquin Zihuatanejo

This all started for me in December of 2006 when I competed against 76 other poets from 76 cities representing eight countries at the Individual World Poetry Slam Competition.  At that competition, I was lucky enough to make the final stage of 12 poets.  After moving from the first round of 12 poets to the second round of seven poets, I had scored high enough to make it to the final round of four.  Jared Paul from Providence scored a 29.3.  Andrea Gibson from Denver scored a 29.4 and Mike McGee from San Jose scored a 29.6.  I was the fourth and last poet to read in the competition and I scored a perfect score of 30, but…

There’s always a “but” in every good story isn’t there. I read for three minutes and 11 seconds.  In a poetry slam, you are only allowed to read for three minutes and 10 seconds; after that you receive a .5 deduction off your score for every 10 second period you go over your allotted time, so when it was all said and done, I received a 29.5 and Mike McGee beat me with a 29.6.

I was crushed not because I lost, but because I had worked so hard, sacrificed so much of my time and energy to make it to that moment and because I poured every bit of myself onto that stage only to lose because of a one second time penalty.  I didn’t think I could ever reproduce the energy, the poetry, the performance that gave that night in Charlotte.

Fast forward two years.  The original host city of the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam had to withdraw from hosting the competition, so with only a few months until the tournament, Charlotte stepped forward and volunteered to host the event again.  When I found this out, I thought to myself, “the same city, the same stage, maybe the planets are lining up for me.”  So I registered for the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam….again.

The drive from Dallas to Charlotte was one of the longest of my life; partly form the 16 hours behind the wheel, partly from the incessant rain that seemed to follow me from Dallas to Charlotte.  However despite the miserable drive, I was absolutely excited about going back and competing because I had written a wealth of new poems and I was determined to do all new poems if I made it to the final stage.

At the opening ceremonies, one of the things that occurs is the draw where every poet prays that they don’t pull the one in their opening round.  No one wants to pull the one knowing that 12 amazing poets will follow them and that scores tend to get higher as the night goes on, a phenomenon called score creep.  Well, I pulled a one, meaning in my first round, a one minute round in which no poem can be longer than one minute and 10 seconds, I had to go first, so I decided to take a chance and perform a comedic poem that’s big and theatrical.  My plan backfired and I finished eighth after the first round of competition.  So in the next round, the four minute round, I decided to do a poem that I hoped to perform on the final stage, a poem entitled “Speaking in Tongues.”  The way scoring works in the Individual World Poetry Slam is similar to golf, the lower your cumulative score, the better you are doing, and as far as making the cut for the final stage, the over/under seems to always fall somewhere around 12.  After the first round my cumulative score was 8, so I knew I needed to win two of the remaining three rounds and score no worse than third in the other.

“Speaking in Tongues” received a perfect score of 30 giving me a 1 in the four minute round.  The next night “The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized,” a poem about the lack of anything remotely real in “reality” TV was awarded the second highest score in the two minute round.  “Poem for Jon,” a poem about a deaf student I taught a few years ago scored high enough for me to win the three minute round.  So my overall cumulative score was a 12, which was good enough to rank me tenth out of 76 poets after the first two days of competition.

So I had made it to the final stage…again.

I drew the 3, meaning I went third in the first round of the biggest poetry slam competition in the country.  Nine extraordinary poets would follow me with only seven poets making it to the next round of seven.

I decided to take a chance and perform a poem entitled “Poem for Keri.”  The poem is a persona poem about a former student diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, and the chance comes from the fact that it’s a poem that’s not loud as some slam poems can be.  It was very well received taking the second highest score in the round.  Many competing poets and audience members told me they thought it was the best poem of the night.

In the second round I took an even bigger chance by performing “What I Would Say to Them” a short, soft spoken poem written for my mother’s silence and my father’s absence.  But in the end, it is a love poem for both of them, for the young, passionate, ridiculous people they once were.  The poem scored high enough for me to make it to the final round of five.

In the final round I chose a brand new poem entitled “Unwritten” about the ugliness and hypocrisy of the competitive nature of slam poetry.  I received a standing ovation and a perfect score of 30 and won the championship trophy that night.  Along with the trophy I also won a book deal with Wordsmith Press and I won the privilege to represent The United States at the World Cup of Poetry Slam in Paris, France June 16^th through the 19^th.

I will be competing against 14 poets from 14 countries all over the world.  Each poet must speak in his native language, so I along with the other competing poets had to submit the 6 poems that we plan to use in the competition back in January so that the festival coordinators could spend months translating our poems into French to be scrolled across a screen behind us as we perform them.

So I leave in a few days for Paris and the biggest poetry slam competition in the world.  I hope I do well and make my family and my country proud.  I look forward to meeting the other competing poets and hearing their work.  I look forward to sharing my work with an audience on the other side of the Atlantic, but most of all I look forward to kissing my wife somewhere along the Seine as the sun sets over the city.

Northwood Literary Festival - 2009

Tuesday, October 20
Wordspace proudly co-sponsors this dynamic gathering of poets and fiction writers that takes place on the campus of Northwood University every fall. The event is held in Lambert Commons on Northwood’s 400 acre campus, located 25 minutes from downtown Dallas, just off Highway 67 south — the Joe Pool Lake exit.

Northwood University
1114 W FM 1382, Cedar Hill, TX 75104

FEATURED ARTISTS

Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University and has been editor of the Southwest Review since 1984. His latest book, a collection of meditations on happiness, is Seven Pleasures (FSG). He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Rock Baby, a native of Hattiesburg, Miss., is a natural per-­ former beginning with his television debut presentation on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. His charismatic performances tap into the emotions of audiences. His honors and titles include Dallas Poetry Team Slam Master, Grand Slam Spoken Word City Champion 2003, and HBO Def Poet in 2003 and 2005.

Susan Briante is the author of the book, Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press, 2007). Briante’s poetry, essays and translations have recently appeared in Ploughshares, Damn the Caesars, Fascicle, Bombay Gin and The Believer. Briante is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Djerassi Foundation, among others. From 1992-­1997, she lived in Mexico City where she worked for the magazines Artes de Me?xico and Mandorla. Briante is an assistant professor of aesthetic studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Farid Matuk is a Peruvian-­born translator, essayist and poet. He is the author of Is it the King? (Effing Press). Recent poems appear in Big Bridge, Barrelhouse, Typesetter, and The Boston Review. Translations from Spanish have appeared or are forth-­ coming in Bombay Gin and Translation Review. Matuk’s essays and reviews have appeared most recently in Cross Cultural Poetics, Sentence Magazine, and the Poetry Project Newsletter.

From Here Through Eternity

Sunday, November 1 at 8 p.m. Suggested donation: $5.
Hosted by Christopher Soden, founder of Dallas Poets Community.
Part ritual/part reading, this evening honors the legacies of great writers and artists who have transformed and influenced our work. Bring an object that reminds you of or is somehow connected to your favorite dead author to add to the ceremonial El Dia de Los Muertos tabla.

Paperbacks Plus Series

Location: Paperbacks Plus
6115 La Vista, Dallas, Texas 75214

What is the purpose of a Day of the Dead altar?

A Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) altar is meant to honor the memory of someone who touched your life. This can be anyone from the family pet to Mother Teresa. Anyone who had a positive impact on your life can be the subject of your Day of the Dead altar.

People also make altars to show their support for others. I have seen Dia de los Muertos altars made to those who have died due to AIDS related illnesses, to those lost in the World Trade Towers attack and the students at Columbine.

There are people who believe that those building an altar are trying to raise the dead. This can’t be farther from the truth, because the belief is that the dead are never really gone, so raising them would be redundant. There is nothing demonic about building a Day of the Dead altar.

Are we trying to communicate with the dead? Yes, and no. There are two aspects to altar making on el Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). The first is to communicate with those that are no longer physically with us. I don’t see how this is any different from people going to visit the graves of their dearly departed. It isn’t about witchcraft, it is about having an eternal dialogue with those that we love. The second aspect is the connection it provides us to the world at large and to our place in the after-life. By building an altar we are acknowledging that we go on and that not being physically present isn’t the same as being gone.

Altars should include:

1. a picture of the one being remembered
2. items they were fond of
3. something to snack on
4. candles
5. flowers
6. gifts

Altars could include:

1. pictures of saints or religious icons
2. toy skeletons, skulls or bones
3. sugar skulls (recipe from Angela at mexicansugarskull.com)
4. books
5. tequila, or their favorite drink and a glass
6. soap, water & a small towel (because being dead can be messy)

A Dia de los Muertos altar can be as simple or as elaborate as you want. The purpose of an altar is remembrance, with that in mind feel free to do what you think your honoree would enjoy. While we have included a few guidelines, these are by no means rules to live by. They are a starting place, where you end up is completely up to you.
Some people take up entire corners of their homes with Day of the Dead altars, others use a simple end table dressed up with fabric and other items. The point is, size doesn’t really matter, what matters is the heart you put into it.

John “Survivor” Blake

John “Survivor” Blake’s nickname is no idle moniker. He has truly survived hellish circumstances and gone on to make work that, in the words of Carlos Andres Gomez, pulls “the reader or listener into the heart of his raw, fragmented truth of unshakeable power. He understands the incredible responsibility of being an artist, as much as anyone I have ever known.”

Dallas Slams - Featured Reader
Location: Café Madrid - Bishop Arts, 408 N. Bishop Ave. Suit 108,
Dallas, Texas 75208

Tim Cloward and Dancing Tongue

An Intimate Evening with Dancing Tongue

Paperbacks Plus Series - Time: 8 p.m. Suggested donation: $5
Location: Paperbacks Plus
6115 La Vista, Dallas, Texas 75214

The multi-media performance poetry troupe Dancing Tongue, the creators of the recent Literary Cabaret series at the Undermain Theatre (with its cutting edge mixture of spoken word, music, performance, movement and video) will present a causal evening of entertainment in the intimate confines of the upstairs lounge of Paperbacks Plus.  Join Tim Cloward, Lisa Huffaker, Fran Carris, Richard Allen & Kim Corbet for a thought-provoking experience that will once again demonstrate that literature is, indeed, a lively art.

Ronald Davison

Thursday, December 3, 2009.
Ronald Davison is a native of Dallas. A multi-­media talent whose work spans poetry, painting and music, Davison is the author of Quiet Evolution (Introspect Books). Two new CDs called Circles and Quiet Evolution II are forthcoming soon.
Frederick Turner is an internationally known poet, lecturer, and scholar, and Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. A graduate of Oxford University, his books, plays, poems, and essays are too numerous to list but can be found at frederickturnerpoet.com. He was recently interviewed on the Discovery Channel’s science documentary, “Understanding Beauty.”

Member Salon
Hosted by Board Member Sarah Riehm

Shug

Friday, December 4, 2009 10:00 PM
Poetry saved Shug from selling out and losing herself in all-white private schools and, later, in A&M University. So now she is searching to see if poetry hid her in the schools to hide her from Big Brother in order that she may come out of exile and revolutionize herself and the rest of us.

Dallas Slams - Featured Reader

Location: Café Madrid - Bishop Arts,
408 N. Bishop Ave. Suit 108, Dallas, Texas 75208