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Aiming to have each resident encounter a poem during the month of April, this year’s festival will immerse the city in large-scale civic publishing projects, generative writing workshops, and site-specific events. Most notably, the festival is produced in collaboration with the people of Miami who submitted their writing and project ideas for consideration throughout the year.
Guided by the belief that Miami is the most poetic place in the world, O, Miami offers year-round educational programming, and open call projects, collecting multi-lingual poems written by Miami residents of all ages. During the annual festival, which celebrates National Poetry Month, the organization broadcasts the intergenerational voices of Miami’s people across the sites and surfaces that make up the city through dynamic activations, offering opportunities for residents to gather, create, and participate in a community where intimate cultural exchange can occur.
“Each year, we hope our festival is a way for people to talk to one another inside of a civic power structure that doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities to speak,” said founder and artistic director P. Scott Cunningham. “Miamians are deeply imaginative, funny, and brilliant, and O, Miami exists to give them a public platform.”
The festivities begin with an opening night celebration on Apr. 1 at The Black Archives Historic Lyric Theater, with poet and 2021 MacArthur Fellow Hanif Abdurraqib (author of A Little Devil In America: In Praise of Black Performance and Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to
A Tribe Called Quest) and writer Alexandra T. Vazquez (author of The Florida Room). P. Scott Cunningham will moderate a conversation on how music and culture come together to forge a sense of place.
On Apr. 2, a returning festival favorite, Poetry in Pajamas, will bring together kids of all ages to recite their favorite poems, whether original or published, surrounded by an audience of pajama-clad peers at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.
On Apr. 7 at The Bass Museum of Art, New York Times No.1 best-selling author Clint Smith will read from his new collection, alongside award-winning poet José Olivarez, and Miami-born poet Jalen Eutsey.
This year’s civic publishing projects play dynamically with scale and memory within the city’s cultural landscape. In partnership with WLRN Public Media, [Your Poem Here] re-imagines a Downtown billboard as a canvas for a single Zip Ode, a unique poetic form designed to transform one’s zip code into an occasion for place-based, lyrical celebration.
My Home, Mi Hogar, presented in partnership with multidisciplinary artist collective Boa Mistura, transforms a poem written by a Miami Beach High School student into a large-scale mural painted on two enormous water tanks near the school — permanently adding just a bit more poetry to the city’s legendary skyline.
Other touring projects will invite creative interaction across Miami for the duration of the festival. Portrait at 34 is a custom-designed photo booth created by local artist Najja Moon to honor her late cousin, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon. The photo booth will produce portraits of each participant paired with age-specific poems written by students and participating local poets.
A nod to the mnemonic technique of the “memory palace,” El Palacio de los Recuerdos is a miniature replica of iconic Miami gastronomic destination El Palacio de los Jugos. Created by Melissa Gutierrez, the artist behind illustration project westofchester, the miniature will serve as a collection bank for Miami memories in multiple languages, which locals will be prompted to write and contribute at various locations throughout the festival.
For over a decade, O, Miami has grown into a holistic arts and literature platform offering year-round opportunities for building community through poetry.
“People often come up to me after our events saying ‘I find community here,’” said communications director Melissa Gomez. “They’re not talking about the neighborhood where we’re hosting an event. They’re talking about the O, Miami community that we’ve cultivated, and I think the encounter with poetry is always going to be the entryway to that.”
Radical inclusivity is a central tenet of the festival, which celebrates local children, adults, elders, and neurodiverse individuals with the same enthusiasm as established poets and published authors.
“O, Miami could have evolved into a very traditional literary festival as opposed to the generative community that is alive throughout the year, not just in April,” said board member Tere Figueras Negrete. “The organization has seen such a beautiful and empowering arc of development, and I think there’s a continuation to that arc when we talk about whose voices we are hearing.”
For the most up to date information and a full listing of events, visit: https://omiami.org/poetry-festival/.
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