Where I Go

I’d Like Pepperoni and Poetry on That

How a Community College Student Started a Poetry Slam at a Visalia Pizzeria

If you want to hear poetry on a Friday night in the San Joaquin Valley, stop by Howie & Son’s Pizza Parlor in Visalia.

You’ll find us in the back room, by the video game machines.

This isn’t your standard poetry reading. It’s poetry slam, the competitive art of performance poetry. We write our own verse and then deliver it, forcefully and in our own distinctive style.

I started organizing the Friday slam about a year ago because there was nothing like it in and around Visalia, where I was born and raised …

by Michael Jasso |

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