John Oliver Simon (1942-2018) went to The Putney School, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore, and went to UC Berkeley. Berkeley became his home. He tangled in the Free Speech Movement on campus in 1964 and the later imbroglio on Telegraph Ave over People’s Park. And he was part of a 1960s poetry scene in Berkeley with Charlie Potts and other poets that he wrote a vivid essay about for Poetry Flash. He considered John C. Adler, Jeffrey Campbell, Daniel Hoffman, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, and Carol Lee Sanchez his mentors.
John had a full and varied career. Among his full-length, published books of poems are Roads to Dawn Lake (Oyez Press, 1968), Neither of Us Can Break the Other’s Hold (Shameless Hussy Press, 1974), Rattlesnake Grass (Hanging Loose Press, 1978), Lord of the House of Dawn (Bombshelter Press, 1991), Caminante (Creative Arts Book Company, 2002), about which Gary Snyder says, “This is a major poem, gritty and elegant, hard-earned, oriented by stars and late night conversations on the long road. John O., like an old time Chinese poet, weaves through history, politics, poverty, geography, poetry, spirit, friendship, love, learning, style, and deep mind; while traveling a continent.”
He was a devoted teacher of children. He taught at the People’s Community School that he co-founded, 1969 to 1973. He was a board member and former president of California Poets in the Schools, working with CPITS, now called CalPoets, since 1971. At one point he was artistic director of Poetry Inside Out, a program of the Center for the Art of Translation. In 2013, he was named River of Words Teacher of the Year—by former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass—for the River of Words Youth Art and Poetry program. For years John has shepherded his young students and shown them off in the children’s poetry segment of the Poetry Flash’s annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival.