Poetry 📓and Photography 📸 by JJZ. Explorations worldwide and within. Trying to be heard, stirred, and perhaps cured by life's many hidden images, and the written-spoken word.
Note: We have updated our codes of conduct. COMING SOON MONDAY – 7/24/23 RENO IS ARTOWN CONTINUES SPOKEN VIEWS COLLECTIVE PRESENTS MONDAY NIGHT POETRY . With accompanying vendor @kemeticlove Writing Prompt(s): . “Artown” . Event: MONDAY NIGHT POETRY Weekly Open Mic (every Monday) @mondaynightpoetrynv . Collaborations: Bookings and Special Event Coordinator Iain Watson @amethyst_noir Founder of Spoken Views Collective @spoken_views_reno . Venue: Produced by Shim’s Surplus Supplies Co. 125 W 3rd, Reno, NV @shimssurplus . Created, Directed and Hosted by Jesse James Ziegler – Poet @sidewayseightprojects . Rundown: July 24th, 2023 (Season 2, Session 30) . 5:00PM – Doors Open 5:30PM – Sign-Ups Open 6:00PM – Prompt Open 6:30PM – Mic Open . NOTE: . (Within the Venue at 125 W 3rd St., Reno) . No hate speech, violence, racism, misogyny, or disrespectful disruptive behavior will be tolerated. No predatory behavior will be tolerated. As an ongoing regular event for Spoken Views Collective, MONDAY NIGHT POETRY has a zero tolerance policy for the fore mentioned behaviors. Spoken Views Collective additionally designates the evening’s HOST as reserving the right to have any and all individuals breaking these expected codes of conduct (which honor the humanity in each other) removed and denied service. If patterns of behavior are either singularly egregious enough or show a pattern of behavior across multiple venues or events then individuals may be denied access to the Collective altogether in order to maintain our vision as a community entity.
Amendment
In addition, any disrespectful behaviors happening outside our events that are affecting the general well being of our community will be assessed and steps will be taken to prevent access to our platform (collaboration, representation & stage time). Any further requests for removal need to be discussed with the owner/manager of the venue. We condemn the mentioned behaviors and will not have those who engage in such behaviors represent our entities.* *(Hosting, Opening Acts, Spotlight Features, Touring Teams, Workshop Leading) . . . #poetry #poet #poets #poem #poems #poetrycommunity #mondaynightpoetry
is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He received an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Mills College. Darius was a recipient of the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is the author of Never Catch Me (Button Poetry, 2022). He hopes to inspire that feeling you get that makes you frown and slightly twist up ya face in approval. Darius’ poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine,The Adroit Journal, American Poetry Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. Darius believes in the dissolution of empire and the total liberation of all oppressed people by any means available. Free the People. Free the Land. Free All Political Prisoners.
Videos:
Darius Simpson – An Ode to Crocs
Darius Simpson – The Role of the Artist
Darius Simpson – We Don’t Die
TEAM PIECE: Darius Simpson and Scout Bostley – Lost Voices
Rundown: June 19th, 2023 (Season 2, Session 25) 5:00PM – Doors Open 5:30PM – Sign-Ups Open 6:00PM – Prompt Open 6:30PM – Set Performances 7:00PM – Host Discretion 7:30PM – Open Mic Open . NOTE: . No hate speech, violence, racism, misogyny, or disrespectful disruptive behavior will be tolerated. No predatory behavior will be tolerated. As an ongoing regular event for Spoken Views Collective, MONDAY NIGHT POETRY has a zero tolerance policy for the fore mentioned behaviors. Spoken Views Collective additionally designates the evening’s HOST as reserving the right to have any and all individuals breaking these expected codes of conduct (which honor the humanity in each other) removed and denied service.
INSPIRATIONAL / INFORMATIVE QUOTES
“I catch the pattern
Of your silence
Before you speak.
I do not need
To hear a word
In your silence
Every tone I seek
Is heard.”
— Langston Hughes, “Silence”
“If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are, indeed, part of the problem.”
— Coretta Scott King

“Words of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.”
“Emancipation wasn’t a gift bestowed on the slaves; it was something they took for themselves, the culmination of their long struggle for freedom, which began as soon as chattel slavery was established in the 17th century, and gained even greater steam with the Revolution and the birth of a country committed, at least rhetorically, to freedom and equality. In fighting that struggle, black Americans would open up new vistas of democratic possibility for the entire country.”
“Studying the blueprints of liberation, one can map out the ways we as The Global African Diaspora have continued to resist and exist under regimes of antiBlack terror. Since the development of racial capitalism, the use of African peoples as capital, our ancestors have always fought for freedom. Our history doesn’t begin with slavery, but our future depends on us ending the mechanisms of it. Juneteenth is an extension of that abolitionist spirit where we march forth in reflection of the struggle.” — Brandon Gonzalez
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
— Toni Morrison
“You must never, ever give out. We must keep the faith because we are one people. We are brothers and sisters. We all live in the same house: The American house.”
— John Lewis
“What I love about #Juneteenth is that even in that extended wait, we still find something to celebrate. Even though the story has never been tidy, and Black folks have had to march and fight for every inch of our freedom, our story is nonetheless one of progress.”
“It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are – who knows?
Rudy K. Francisco (born July 27, 1982) is an American spoken word poet and author.[1][2][3][4][5] He has won several Poetry Slams and written six books of poetry: Getting Stitches, Scratch, No Gravity, No Gravity Part II, Helium, and I’ll Fly Away.[6] He made an appearance on TV One’s Verses and Flow and performed his spoken-word poem “Complainers” as well as “Rifle” on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.[7][8][9][10]
Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day[1]) is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.[2] From 1868 to 1970, it was observed on May 30.[3] Since 1970, it is observed on the last Monday of May.
SIDEWAYS EIGHT PROJECTS 