Award-winning poet and World Poetry Slam Champion Joaquin Zihuatanejo will be the featured poet at the MultiCultural Center’s Another Type of Groove (ATOG) event tonight.
Zihuatanejo has performed on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and has won national and international poetry slams. This will be his first time performing at Cal Poly.
Zihuatanejo grew up in a barrio in east Dallas and later became a English and creative writing high school teacher. He has also published three poetry collections and has an album of spoken word poems called “Barrio Songs: A Spoken Work Collection” that he said are meant to be about the voices of his youth. Zihuatanejo said that a lot of his poetry has been influenced by his childhood and the people who surrounded him.
“I was blessed to sort of be raised in a setting that was kind of filled with poems. From my grandfather’s garden to the wild field,” he said. “I surrounded myself with storytellers as a child constantly.”
The MultiCultural Center’s (MCC) coordinator Renoda Campbell wants students and community members who attend to draw inspiration from Zihuatanejo’s depiction of barrio life and Chicano culture.
“I just want students to hear a different perspective. I think a lot of times they don’t experience that here at Cal Poly,” Campbell said. “I’m hoping Joaquin’s poetry will give them a visual of what it’s like not being here, but also a symbol of hope that you don’t necessarily become entrenched in being in that atmosphere, that you can get out.”
Event coordinator Josue Urrutia describes Another Type of Groove as a way for students and community members to freely express themselves in an artistic way. The event has two open-mic sessions for anyone wanting to share their poetry, and a disc jockey who plays music during the show’s intermission. Urrutia, an architectural engineering senior, said he got hooked because of the chance he got to be with his peers and hear their emotions and opinions. Hearing from peers is one thing Urrutia said an attendee can definitely look forward to.
“They talk about relevant issues — issues that everyone can relate to and even issues that people don’t really think about and that’s one of the side benefits of poetry,” Urrutia said. “It’s almost like a social relative tool to kind of move people and promote social change. It’s pretty amazing.”
Campbell said ATOG is one of MCC’s most popular events and draws approximately 300 students and community members to each event. ATOG co-coordinator and statistics senior Saba Abuhay said she thinks the event is so well-received because of the freedom and entertainment attendees enjoy. She personally enjoys the raw emotion and feeling some poets bring to the event with their heartfelt poetry about rape, relationships, school and other life issues.
“It gives people the opportunity to freely express themselves and it’s an open environment. It’s a performance on something that is a piece of them,” Abuhay said. “Whether it’s comedic or whether it’s something that’s just personal or dramatic. When they go up on stage and just put it out there to like 300 people it’s like, ‘Wow.'”
For Zihuatanejo, wowing people isn’t what he considers a successful show. Instead, he said, he feels most successful when someone approaches him at the end of a show and said they were inspired by his poems.
“Basically I want to make people feel and think a little more deeply than they otherwise would have that day. The world is in a big damn hurry right now and that’s what I love about poetry,” Zihuatanejo said. “It makes us slow down. It opens our hearts up, and our minds up and our souls.”
ATOG is from 7:30 to 10 tonight in Chumash Auditorium and is open to the public.
Award-winning poet and World Poetry Slam Champion Joaquin Zihuatanejo will be the featured poet at the MultiCultural Center’s Another Type of Groove (ATOG) event tonight.