Category Archives: San Diego, California

Border Voices Project-San Diego, California

ORGANIZER: Jack Webb, Director, Border Voices Poetry Project

CONTACT: Jack Webb 619-847-8714 // jackbard1@gmail.com


LATEST ACTION in San Diego!

 

Poets .. Visionaries .. Musicians .. Photographers

Saturday, Oct. 15th, 5 – 7 p.m.

Cafe Libertalia

3834 Fifth Avenue

San Diego, CA 92103

Co-hosts: Claudia Poquoc & Seretta Martin

I have a confession to make. Confessions can be fun, especially if they’re full of color & pizzazz, & I can promise you mine is …

I’ve received a lot of publicity as the retired Union-Tribune editor who founded the Border Voices project, which sends poets into hundreds of classrooms throughout San Diego. Others know me primarily for my weekly TV show, where I interview Nobel laureates & others about how they write poetry. Or they’ve read some of the 23 books I’ve published.

But none of that is what I really am, & THAT is the confession. What I REALLY am is a rabble-rouser.

For example, I was one of the original, leading organizers of the Vietnam War protests in San Francisco & Berkeley, protests that spread across the nation & toppled a president.

Because of the terrible things I saw at that time, my rabble-rousing has been more cerebral ever since.

Today, we’re in the middle of a new explosion of rebellion, of demands for change, & we need to be a part of it. Civilization is beginning to sing a new song, & it is our song.

But I return to my underlying theme: I saw terrible things occurring around me back in the 1960s, & in other crusades I have been involved in since. People turned on each other, & on their fellow citizens, with contempt & violence.

We cannot let people of hate co-opt the latest movement for creative change.

That is one reason I have promoted poetry in the schools since 1993. By teaching our kids to think for ourselves, we build hope for the future. And poetry is the best way to do that. As the greatest historian of the last 400 years said, poetry & civilization are pretty much the same thing. It was in the songs they sang around their campfires that our ancestors — 100,000 years ago — discovered the dream of civilization.

Today, in this coffee shop, we will listen to poets, with new dreams & new songs, offering competing & exciting visions of the future.

Thank you for joining us.

Jack Webb

FEATURED POETS:

Veronica Spinharney of Occupy San Diego

Sandra Alcosser, award- winning poet of Except by Nature and A Fish to Feed All Hunger, directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at SDSU each fall and collaborates with scientists through Poets House New York. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review and Poetry.

Shadab Zeest Hasmi, author of Baker of Tarifa, San Diego Book Award winner 2010, editor of Magee Park Poets anthology, and a teacher in California Poets in the Schools. Originally from Pakistan, Shadab now lives in San Diego and her poems appear in Poetry International Journal and other world-wide publications.

Jack Webb, publisher of 23 books, founder-director of the Border Voices Poetry Project and TV host, whose poems deal with the change that grows in solitude … the geometry of wisdom, and the songs our ancestors sang around campfires, in which they discovered the dream of civilization. They are singing again …

And many more!!!!

100,000 Poets for Change: A Homage

San Diego offers a three-week continuation / permutation / adulatory spinoff on the World Poetry Festival

San Diego’s Border Voices Poetry Project plans a dramatically different twist on the grand poetry celebration involving cities from the United States to Tibet.

San Diego’s creativity is inspired by logistical problems similar to those that have delayed Sept. 24 festivities in cities such as Tel Aviv (which cited conflicts with the Sabbath) to Granada, Spain (problems securing a suitable venue).

Our own bardic solution begins with a citywide call for every San Diego resident to put a poem in his or her pocket on the morning of Sept. 24, and then share it with others every day through Saturday, Oct. 15.

On Oct. 15, we will hold a poetry reading featuring some of the area’s top poets. The exact lineup will be announced the week before the reading.

NOTE BENE: The list of those participating in Border Voices festivals since 1993 reads like an artistic “Who’s Who.” That list includes Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz; U.S. poet laureates Kay Ryan, Robert Pinsky, Robert Haas and Billy Collins; filmmaker Michael Moore; Maya Angelou; and dozens of other celebrated artists from around the world.

THE THEME: Border Voices is built on the healing perception that it is through song – through poetry – that our children realize themselves, endure, and thrive.

Top educators have praised Border Voices, noting that test scores soared after intensive poetry workshops in San Diego classrooms.

Border Voices director Jack Webb recently wrote a friend about the benefits of such introspective and poetic writing (Webb has published 22 books):

“I’ve been doing an enormous amount of writing recently, and found it nourishing. An apparent paradox: introspection is both enriching, and a way of avoiding the modern ailment that Dostoevsky identified … turning our Selves into god. A wonderful, unexpected gift.”

It is a gift that Border Voices has been delighted to share with children … and would be delighted to share with all in need, including those-who-shall-not be-named (who take such pleasure in telling others what to do, rather than teaching them how to see reality for themselves).

VISIT Bordervoices.com for links to Border Voices TV shows featuring world-celebrated artists, as well as some delicious poems by San Diego students.

 

VIEW POETRY AND IMAGES OF SAND DIEGO EVENT PDF.

san diego 1-22-12 revised.pdf

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Porter’s Pub-San Diego, California

ORGANIZER: Kia Warner CONTACT: kiakiali@gmail.com. LOCATION: Porter’s Pub     Share this!Tweet

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