“We’re actually targeted on doing what we do finest, however doing it greater, higher, and with larger impression and attain,” P. Scott Cunningham, the competition’s founder and CEO, tells New Times. “The stuff we’re doing now we could not have finished two years in the past, and we’re having fun with that journey.”
For the final eight years, O, Miami has partnered with WLRN on Zip Odes, a poetic construction the place every variety of the creator’s ZIP code corresponds to the variety of phrases in every line. The activation has acquired 15,000 submissions all through its run. For this 12 months’s competition, O, Miami has introduced that one fortunate Zip Ode shall be displayed on a billboard throughout from the Miami-Dade Arena in downtown Miami throughout April. Titled “[ Your poem here ],” the challenge is one in every of many occurring throughout Miami-Dade County throughout National Poetry Month.
Last fall, O, Miami opened its competition submission sooner than in prior years. “That’s one hundred pc the work of my colleagues Melissa Gomez and Sara Haley, who’ve finished a tremendous job making a extra systemized and environment friendly course of for our competition planning,” Cunningham explains. And with a rising variety of submissions, the competition’s impression in Miami and past is extra seen than ever.
“We have an enormous challenge, I believe the largest we have ever finished, debuting in [in April],” Cunningham says. “In collaboration with the City of Miami Beach, we have commissioned an artist collective from Spain known as Boa Mistura to color two gigantic water tanks adjoining to Miami Beach Senior High. For the final six months, we have been educating poetry at Beach High, and the poetry the scholars are writing is being integrated into the challenge.”
Everything is on the desk for this 12 months’s competition — from ekphrastic workshops on Dolly Parton’s cultural impression to an open mic night time at Super Wheels. Every day of April is jam-packed with an occasion or poetry-based challenge that strives to succeed in Miami-Dade residents throughout town. You would possibly even encounter poems within the type of a parking ticket, non permanent tattoos, or whereas flying into Miami International Airport.
Regardless of the place you’re situated in Miami-Dade or how ceaselessly you learn poetry, O, Miami invitations everybody to expertise the literary kind regardless of expertise or talent stage. Beginners can discover themselves one-to-one with a poet at Books & Books in Coral Gables, and the younger poets can take part in the Poetry in Pajamas open mic on the Miami Beach Botanical Garden. There are even workshops tied to native happenings, whether or not neighborhood writing trauma-informed workshops addressing the Surfside tragedy or the preservation of Virginia Key Beach Park.
The fortunate winner of the inaugural “[ Your poem here ]” contest shall be revealed on April 3, after which their poem shall be plastered on the downtown billboard for 3 weeks. WLRN information director Sergio Bustos says greater than 200 submissions have been despatched in for the prospect to be featured, with a whole bunch extra anticipated earlier than the March 22 deadline.
Even in the event you’re not the chosen winner, you may nonetheless submit a Zip Ode all through April. Every Saturday in April, WLRN will announce the highest ten poems of the week, culminating in the Zip Odes finale on April 26 at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, the place chosen Zip Odes shall be learn aloud to a public viewers by their authors.
Whether your ZIP code has a zero within the center or a 9 on the finish, there’s one factor everybody submitting a Zip Ode may have in frequent: it’s going to begin with the quantity three.
O, Miami Poetry Festival. Saturday, April 1, by way of Sunday, April 30, at numerous places; omiami.org. Ticket costs range.