Photo courtesy of City of Dallas via YouTube.
A Woodrow Wilson alumnus was named the first poet laureate for the City of Dallas.
Joaquín Zihuatanejo was honored in a ceremony this morning at City Hall, in which Mayor Eric Johnson also declared April as Poetry Month in Dallas. Madison Rojas, who attends Greenhill School, was named the youth poet laureate.
At the ceremony, Zihuatanejo performed a poem called “Abuelo’s Garden,” which is about the garden in East Dallas he used to work with his grandfather.
Zihuatanejo will represent Dallas over the next two years by presenting his original poems at schools and community events; advocating for and leading Dallas residents to read, write, perform and appreciate the written and spoken word; and he will hold artist-in-residence office hours at the Central Library, according to the Dallas Public Library.
The East Dallas native has written six poetry collections. His most recent, Arsonist, won the 2017 Anhinga-Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. Zihuatanejo and his work have also been featured in Prairie Schooner, Huizache, Sonora Review, NBC-DFW, HBO and NPR.
In 2009, he was ranked the world’s top slam poet after winning the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship and the World Cup of Poetry Slam Championship.
Three years later, he established Dallas Youth Poets, a nonprofit that serves student poets in Dallas and takes a group of them to the International Brave New Voices Poetry Slam Competition.
After graduating Woodrow, Zihuatanejo attended the University of North Texas and received a MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
According to his website, Zihuatanejo has also shared a stage with Billy Collins, Saul Williams, E. Lynn Harris, Alicia Keys and Maya Angelou.
The poet laureate program was established by the City of Dallas in 2021 to highlight great poetry and the poet’s role in sharing work with the community.
