Joaquin Zihuatanejo is a world-renowned poet and award-winning teacher. He performs his poems all around North America and Europe, and teaches people how to discover their voices.
Joaquin has achieved a lot throughout his career as a poet. He is the champion of the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam, the 2009 World Cup of Poetry Slam, and the Spoken Word Poetry Slam. Additionally, he is a finalist for the National Poetry Slam.
He came to New Tech on Nov 1 for every flex session. He is so influential that older students and even parents, came to his sessions just to watch him teach. The rookies in English I Honors got to perform their slam poem drafts to Joaquin, who gave them feedback on their writing, choreography, and performance.
Joaquin also performed his poem “The Family Tree” for many of the sessions. This is a poem where he uses the metaphor of a fruit “not falling far from the tree” to describe him and his father who left him at birth. He finishes the poem with a powerful line: “I am the fruit that fell far from the tree”, to emphasize that he is not his father. This is just one of his many poems. One of his famous poems is 19 Mexicans, which is about 19 immigrants that were killed crossing the border, but were not named. Another is Abuelo’s Garden, which is about being raised by his grandparents; alluding to the growing herbs in the garden.
Joaquin has written many books as well. His book Occupy Whiteness was created by ripping pages off of a white author’s book, and erasing words, so that what was left was his poem. Occupy Whiteness is about the erasure of brown life. He has also written Fight or Flight, Like and Share, and Family Tree, which are collections of his poems.
Joaquin is an incredible poet and teacher. He wants to plant seeds for the future generations. New Tech is very grateful to have him. You can book workshops, performances, or trainings with Joaquin at jzthepoet.com.
