Poetry for the People and the Teaching Vision of June Jordan March 24, 2012

"Poetry for the People and the Teaching Vision of June Jordan"



Founded by June Jordan in 1991 at UC Berkeley, Poetry for the People (P4P) provides a unique and collectively-developed pedagogical model for political and artistic empowerment through the teaching of poetry. A culmination of June Jordan’s career as a politically engaged teacher and poet, Poetry for the People aims at furthering the vision of Martin Luther King’s “beloved community.” Former student teacher poets and colleagues of June Jordan, architects behind June
Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, and directors of Poetry for the People programs will provide a historical perspective on the founding and growth of P4P.



With: Samiya Bashir, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Ruth Forman, Lauren Muller, Alberto Palomar, Marcos Ramirez, Junichi P. Semitsu, and Solmaz Sharif.



Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People between 2002-2006. She has taught creative writing at U.C. Berkeley, New York University, Goldwater Hospital, and Berkeley High School. She is a 2011 winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, the former managing director of The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and a 2011-2012 Poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.



Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2009 Lambda Literary Award, and Where the Apple Falls, a finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. A former Student Teacher Poet with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, for over a decade, Bashir worked as a social justice communications professional and was a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent.



Xochiquetzal Candelaria is the author of Empire, published by the University of Arizona Press. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The New England Review, Gulf Coast, The Seneca Review, among other literary journals. She holds an MFA degree from NYU and has received multiple fellowships, including those from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the National Endowment for the Arts. A former Student Teacher Poet at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, she currently teaches at San Francisco City College.



Ruth Forman is the author of poetry collections We Are the Young Magicians (Beacon, 1993) and Renaissance, (Beacon, 1997) and children’s book, Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007). Ruth is a former teacher of creative writing with the University of Southern California and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a twelve-year faculty member with the VONA-Voices writing program.



Lauren Stuart Muller was a co-editor of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, published by Routeledge in 1995. She is currently Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies at City College of San Francisco, where she also founded a Poetry for the People program.



Beto Palomar is a Xicano poet and artist born and raised in Los Angeles and Watts, California. He learned and taught poetry in June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley where he graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a self-designed major, political poetry of the world. He is a recipient of a 2007-08 individual artist grant from the City of San Francisco. He teaches bilingual special education in Queens, New York.



marcos ramírez is a poet born and raised in Richmond, California. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley. As the former Program Coordinator for June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley, he learned how to juggle the tasks of booking world renown poets, reserving classrooms, copying poetry readers, teaching, writing, maybe eating, always laughing, and coordinating poetry readings all in a days work. He lives in San Francisco, California.



Junichi P. Semitsu was designated Director of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People by Jordan before her passing in 2002. He is currently a Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, a writer for Poplicks.com, and a former embedded blogger for the Dixie Chicks. A graduate from Stanford Law School, he has since retired from the practice of law and spends his free time collecting Pez dispensers, looking for parking, and honoring his marriage vows.