Lauren Zuniga
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Lauren Zuniga

Utica, Michigan, United States

Utica, Michigan, United States
Solo Spoken Word Comedy

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"Other Testimonials from Schools"

"I don't even like poetry but when she does it, it's like... I love this stuff." - Robert McAlevoy, Everett Community College

"Lauren Zuniga has been an idol of mine since I first started hearing her poetry. When she came to preform at UPenn, it was a dream come true for many of us long time poetry nerds. Lauren gave an amazing show, with the poetry that we have come to expect from one of the top female poets in the nation, but more importantly she won all of us over with her humor, excitement, and love for the craft." - Rosa Escandon, University of Pennsylvania - Website


"Other Testimonials from Schools"

"I don't even like poetry but when she does it, it's like... I love this stuff." - Robert McAlevoy, Everett Community College

"Lauren Zuniga has been an idol of mine since I first started hearing her poetry. When she came to preform at UPenn, it was a dream come true for many of us long time poetry nerds. Lauren gave an amazing show, with the poetry that we have come to expect from one of the top female poets in the nation, but more importantly she won all of us over with her humor, excitement, and love for the craft." - Rosa Escandon, University of Pennsylvania - Website


"Review from Alvernia University"

Lauren was SO amazing with my students… before her performance, she led a creative writing workshop and was able to connect to the students in a way I have never seen. The students were actually fully engaged and excited to be writing! The creativity she helped them express was incredible! Lauren was so easy to work with, and my students LOVED her performance. They very much appreciated the stories & experiences she shared with them through her art.” - Website


"Review from Poet/Activist Andrea Gibson"

“Dear Lauren, It is impossible to read your book without falling in love with you. I stopped reading right before the end so I wouldn’t show up on your Oklahoma porch wearing a baby blue tuxedo, ring in hand, begging you to stuff a fistful of cake in my mouth.” ~ Andrea Gibson, Author,The Madness Vase, Winner of 2008 Women of the World Poetry Slam - Write Bloody


"Review from Poet/Activist Andrea Gibson"

“Dear Lauren, It is impossible to read your book without falling in love with you. I stopped reading right before the end so I wouldn’t show up on your Oklahoma porch wearing a baby blue tuxedo, ring in hand, begging you to stuff a fistful of cake in my mouth.” ~ Andrea Gibson, Author,The Madness Vase, Winner of 2008 Women of the World Poetry Slam - Write Bloody


"The Smell of Good Mud Review"

On the back cover of Lauren Zuniga’s The Smell of Good Mud, poet Andrea Gibson writes, “Dear Lauren, it is impossible to read your book without falling in love with you.” I say, too late. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga before I read her book. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga in a small theater in downtown Scranton two weeks ago. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga when she opened her mouth to read and her whole life fell out. We learned about her home, her children, her childhood, her loss, her love, and everything in between. This poet is so intimate with her audience, I almost want to set her a place at my Christmas Eve dinner.

So when I opened The Smell of Good Mud, I half-suspected I would love the words between the covers, and Zuniga did not disappoint. The strength in Zuniga’s work is her hard-fought language. She makes puzzles from words, scrambled eggs with social norms.  Her images kaleidoscope across the page and spring to life over and over again like an eternal fountain of nouns and verbs. In “Dear Lemon Engine,” she paints the physicality of her grandmother:

My grandmother’s hands don’t work anymore. They are twisted seashells. She keeps every ex-husband on her back. Secretaries. Stillborn babies. Dried up milk. Keeps them in the floppy pockets of her nightgown. Let’s them gnaw on her bones. I don’t want to be crippled.

In “Gas Station Vodka,” she surprises with language again:

We will need a room full of compasses and stopwatches. Otherwise, we will have no idea where we are or how long we’ve been there. We will say Thanks every time we leave the bathroom. We will drink, gossip, and curl lips like old people who don’t give a damn about anything because they are old. But we won’t ever get old. We will get artistic. We will get Grand Canyon and shoreline.

If imagery and language are the sea on which Zuniga’s poems sail, then her ability to reach the shared human experience is the boat in which she rides. The Smell of Good Mud is the journey of a young woman, an ex, a mother, a daughter, a lover, but most of all it is a collection of pebbles we all keep under our mattress to remind us we are connected to something greater.  In “Stormchaser,” a beautiful poem written for the poet’s sister, we are reminded of the familial bonds and the elasticity with which they are constructed:

Tonight when she was fighting the police officer, her mouth was a goblet of hurricanes, I wanted to tell her

Kait, not every storm is worth chasing. Sometimes you have to take shelter. Build the house yourself. Let their answers beat on you like hail on a snare drum but you just keep thumping out your song. You’re the only one who knows it, You chose this body and this life and this family like we chose you and I promise we’ll quit trying to change you if you’ll quit trying to leave us.

Hearing Zuniga read this poem aloud was like watching an empty cloud fill up with rain. The emotion in her voice was exactly as strong as it is on the page and that’s what makes this poet fresh and good, and terrifying, all at the same time. I will leave you with some lines from my favorite poem in the collection, “Boston Marriage”:

There are no fathers in my family. Only men who marry mothers. Men who leave mothers. Sometimes I think if a man could hold me hard enough it would make my grandmother feel wanted.

Lauren Zuniga can out word me, you, hell, all of us. She is a true wordsmith.  Don’t just buy The Smell of Good Mud, gather it up and plant it in your garden, line your shelves with its words, sprinkle some in your laundry. The more these poems spread about your life, the better you’ll be.

- Pank Magazine


"Poet Seeks Peace Through Spoken Word"

When you say “poetry,” many imagine musty classrooms, soul- and creativity-restricting desks and draconian Shakespearean form. Ask someone when he or she last wrote a poem, and you’re likely to recieve hard looks and tales of ruler-snapping English teachers peering over horn-rimmed glasses as they chant the merits of iambic pentamiter.

That isn’t Lauren Zuniga’s poetry. A poet living in Oklahoma City, she writes the kind of poetry that opens doors and windows to let breezes into those musty classrooms. Read Zuniga’s work, and you’re likely to find yourself with the urge to stand on the street corner passing out blankets to the homeless or walk barefoot through a grassy field just for the pleasure of how it feels between your toes. Listen to one of her CDs, and you’ll be left wondering why you have the faint taste of Indian safron on your tongue and the echo of djembe drum beats in your ears. Zuniga’s poetry will take you places.

Zuniga practices slam poetry, an artform that is quickly growing in popularity across the state. At a poetry slam, artists perform spoken-word poetry, and randomly selected members of the audience give them a numeric score. From the moment she began performing, Zuniga made a mark on the poetry slam circuit.

“When I was 18 I started rapping,” Zuniga said. “I went to a poetry reading and did and rap and they told me, ‘You know, you’d probably be into slam.’ So I went back the next week when they were having a slam and did a poem and I won. It was the first time I felt like I had my own art form.”

From that moment on, Zuniga was hooked. In high school, she found herself immersed in the party scene with no real outlet for her emotions.

“I was a party girl, I was kind of out of control with the drugs and all of that,” Zuniga said. “When I got into poetry, I just stopped all that. I didn’t need it anymore.”

At first, she wrote purely about her life. For her art, nothing is off limits. She has written extensively about falling in love, going through her divorce and the bond she feels with her two children. It was a job that made her poetry begin to take a turn toward social activism, however. Zuniga worked for four years at the state Capitol, often fielding phone calls from people from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

During her time there, Oklahoma passed legislation banning Sharia law.

“I was so overwhelmed when the election results came in and people passed all this ridiculous legislation,” Zuniga said. “We have people that are hungry and don’t have healthcare and don’t have basic needs and we’re trying to pass laws that don’t even affect us. It just infuriated me that they were able to convince people that many people.”

Zuniga went on to write two poems titled “To the Oklahoma Lawmakers” and “To the Oklahoma Progressives Plotting Mass Exodus.” The first was her response to legislation requiring that women in Oklahoma receive an ultrasound and listen to the baby’s heartbeat before receiving an abortion. The latter was her plea both to other progressives in Oklahoma and to herself to not flee Oklahoma for more liberal land.

“I wrote that poem really to convince myself to stay,” Zuniga said. “It took awhile for me to feel comfortable using art as activism. I used to not do anything political because I felt like it would divide people. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be in a room of strangers and make them hate me.’ And that’s the easy way out.”

Since then, Zuniga has made the decision to continue to stay and created in Oklahoma. She has also begun to help others in the area find their creative voices through programs she has started for both youth and adults. She helped found the “Visionary Artist Series” hosted monthly at Urban Roots in Oklahoma City. The program brings in artists to perform and speak about their art, creating a dialogue about creativity for the public.

Zuniga also started a program geared toward introducing spoken-word poetry to youth in Oklahoma. Oklahoma Young Writers, is a series of free poetry workshops hosted every Sunday at the Oklahoma City Public Library. Anyone is welcome to attend, but Zuniga said they especially gear the program toward youth ages 13 to 19. She hopes that through the program a youth poetry slam will take form for the National Poetry Slam held annually.

“I have dreams about reaching that one kid in some rural town in Oklahoma that has never heard anything like slam poetry and never believed he or she could do something like that and empowering them to do that,” Zuniga said.

Ultimately, Zuniga hopes that her work will reach as many people as possible and help foster a conversation and a creative community.

“Art is the most human and intimate thing that we do,” she said. “You find out how similar we all are. I just want to be able to create and share what I create.”

Zuniga’s work, both in written and recorded form, is available through her website, www.laurenzuniga.com or for selective purcha - Norman Transcript


Discography

Full Length Poetry Collections:
The Nickel Tour, Penmanship Books, 2009
The Smell of Good Mud, Write Bloody Publishing, 2012

Chapbooks:
The Bliss Molds, 2007
Left Plains, 2010
Eat the Moon Slow, 2013

Spoken Word Albums:
The Nothing Becomes You, 2008
Receipts and Other Gentle Tallies of Debt, 2010

Photos

Bio

* Move On called her one of the worlds' strongest voices in against the "war on women"

*Daily Kos called her "a voice that can change the game!"

* Top 10 most booked act at all 3 NACA conferences showcased so far.

Lauren Zuniga is an internationally touring poet and teaching artist. A three time national slam finalist and author of two award winning poetry collections, MoveOn. Org called her work, the most riveting message. Daily Kos called her a voice that can change the game. Born and raised in Oklahoma, she is the voice of Oklahoma City Community College's Now is Power campaign featured on television and radio. In 2012, she served as the Activist-In-Residence for the University of Oklahoma and was voted Best Local Author by the Oklahoma Gazette. Pank Magazine said, If imagery and language are the sea on which Zunigas poems sail, then her ability to reach the shared human experience is the boat in which she rides. She has shared stages with Andrea Gibson, Sarah Kay, Taylor Mali and Flaming Lips. She lives with her two kids in an artist collective named Clementine and likes to make art with old magazines and glue.