Shelf Awareness
The annual O, Miami Poetry Festival--whose mission "is for every single person in Miami-Dade County to encounter a poem during the month of April," is currently in full swing, both "as a celebration of contemporary poetry and an experimental project to turn a metropolitan area into a canvas for the literary arts," weaving poetry "into existing infrastructures and combines it with other forms in order to democratize participation in the arts."Last Saturday, poetry fans gathered in Miami Beach's SoundScape Park "to picnic, browse through books from stands provided by Bookleggers and Books & Books independent bookstore; and stake out the perfect grassy spot to experience the (first ever!) Poetry Wallcast," featuring 2011 National Book Award winner Nikky Finney and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass.
This year's participants also include Cathy Bowman, Campbell McGrath, Stephanie Strickland, Denise Duhamel, Julie Marie Wade, José Kozer, Reina María Rodríguez, Jaswinder Bolina, Mia Leonin, Geoffrey Philp, Donna Weir-Soley, Don Share, Jimmy Santiago Baca and many others.
Among the many "projects/non-readings" taking place in Miami this month are a Poetry Lottery, the first ever Miami Litcrawl!; and an event where "Jose Martí, the Cuban revolutionary poet returns from the dead to share his poems on horseback."
"You can kind of combine poetry with anything," festival founder P. Scott Cunningham told the Miami Herald. "We're just trying to do stuff that people want to go to."
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