Jimmy Nil Fishhawk

I'm Florida born and raised--grew up on the East coast, went to college over on the West coast, moved to the landlocked, breeze-deprived, swamp-dogged middle of the state to start a punk rock band that never happened, but fell in love with Gainesville and its surroundings in the meantime. I believe in the transformative, alchemical power of language, and I believe that poetry is the most the primal human mode of artistic expression.  I also think that poetry is in all of us, is for all of us, is about all of us.  I have spent the better part of my adult life working on projects that reflect this vision.  ThirdEyeSpoken is the latest and greatest of these organic concoctions I've been privileged to be a part of here in the Gainesville-area cultural scene. 

I also believe in the necessity and possibility of political and cultural revolution from the grassroots, and to that end I've been involved with Gainesville's information insurgency, the Civic Media Center, for over 15 years, with much of that involvement centered around the CMC's Thursday Night Poetry Jam, a no-holds-barred reading and performance space that recreates itself magically every Thursday night at 9:30pm(-ish) on the terrazzo floor and beat-carpeted stage of the Center.  Y'all come on down to the Jam, y'hear?  All styles of Word Art are welcome, everybody come and bring 5 friends.  Whether you're new to the Word and/or new to town or a lifelong poet and diehard Gainesvillain, the Jam is a warm, funny, welcoming space to explore wordsmithery and reading/performance before an attentive audience.  It is this spirit of solidarity and mutual aid, community and cooperation that drew me into ThirdEyeSpoken as well, and I'm proud of the many and varied things that TES has done with the positive people power we've put together to make this team work and make all these amazing nights of art, expression and social uplift happen.