Well Versed: Poetry Month in Coconut Grove

With new voices and old ones, Coconut Grove will celebrate the written word with contests, readings, clothing swaps, and poems you can eat.

As early as kindergarten, Coconut Grove resident Marc Stone was often homebound with severe asthma. His mother unlocked his love of poetry by reading to him. 

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” William Shakespeare’s Marc Antony speech in “Julius Caesar,” and Dr. Seuss books, among others, were common fare.

Despite some early success as a writer and actor in college, Stone’s career path took a less glamorous – if more practical – turn. He became a corporate lawyer. 

But the muse never strayed too far, despite the long hours Stone spent building his law practice. In 2012, poems from Stone’s first anthology, Diminishment, were nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. His published short fiction is also acclaimed. 

Those talents – not his legal ones – are what Stone chose to tap after joining the board of the Barnacle Society. Last year, he launched “Poetry Night at the Barnacle,” an annual showcase of emerging poets from high schools across Miami-Dade County.

This year’s event will be Sunday April 6 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Barnacle Historic State Park in downtown Coconut Grove.

The event coincides with National Poetry Month, a month-long celebration of poetry and poets, initiated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. 

Poetry Night at the Barnacle takes place on the sweeping lawn behind the park’s historic home of Coconut Grove pioneer Commodore Ralph Middleton Munroe. Last year’s inaugural event drew close to 300 people, Stone says.

Ten or so student winners will read their poems (selected from among 600 entries) at the event, together with two of the judges – former U.S. inaugural poet and Miami-Dade County Poet Laureate Richard Blanco and University of Miami English Department Chair Jaswinder Bolina. Miami Dade’s Poetry Ambassador Nicole Tallman will also take the stage. 

Other judges include the nationally acclaimed South Florida-based poets Campbell McGrath, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Denise Duhamel, and Michael Hettich. 

At last year’s event, some of the parents of the young poets seemed the most surprised by the quality of the work. “I had no idea my son could write,” Stone remembers one parent telling him. 

“They’re finding out for the first time!” Stone said. “The maturity of expression, the rhythm of the words and lines is astounding… When these kids look back, they’re going to be blown away by what they did.” 

Poetry is a unique art form in its “message and effect,” Stone says. 

“When a high school student is guided in the right way to focus on all of those things, it touches on things inside a human being who’s growing to be an adult. I think the sense of emotional maturity, meaning and depth, [it’s] something we can relate to aside from needing to survive, making money, how we have relationships — it can be an outlet.”

Stone references a well-known quote from the French playwright and philosopher Jean Paul Sartre: “Poetry is on the side of painting, sculpture and music.”

The topics the students choose to write about are mature, offering a snapshot of our times, he adds, everything from “discovering grief for the first time… to the deleterious effects of postmodern commercialism, to being objectified as a young woman, to the fear of being pulled from school by immigration.”  

April’s annual celebration of poetry in Coconut Grove extends beyond the Barnacle. 

The O, Miami Poetry Festival is a month-long event that promotes the love of poetry in new and novel ways throughout the county. It started with the goal of having every single person in the county interact with poetry in April. 

This year the festival’s theme is “Soy de todas partes” or “I am from everywhere,” celebrating the immigrant experience through the works of local poets. 

The O, Miami organization will install 100 poems from its 30,000+ poem archive in storefronts, restaurants, and other public spaces. Executive Director Melody Santiago calls the project, “an act of empathy acupuncture.”

Some of those poems were written by Coconut Grove Elementary School students in the O, Miami Sunroom classroom residency program, one of 30 such classrooms countywide. 

Poems by schoolchildren in the Sunroom program are showcased in Noah Levy’s “Chiquita Poemas,” an O, Miami project which invites Miamians to place fully edible, food-grade stickers featuring delightful, bite-sized poems about Miami on fresh produce.

“Anywhere there is a lonely fruit can now be a device for sharing poetry,” Santiago says. Sticker sheets are available at O, Miami events, Coconut Grove Farmers Market, and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Farmers Market.

“They’re in three languages – four if you count Spanglish!” she adds. 

Vizcaya is the locus of two O, Miami’s events. At its farmers market, the project “Choose Your Character: Clothing Swap & Poetry Pop-Up,” by Amalia Maria on Sunday April 13, will invite people to “bring something you want to swap, and [write about] who you were, who was the person who wore this. Or who did you aspire to be when you bought those chinos and why are you giving them away?” 

Vizcaya, in partnership with WLRN, also will host, on April 23 from 6 to 9 p.m., the ten-year anniversary of “ZipOdes Finale” which features local poems that are structured to match the digits of the writer’s ZIP code. 

The Grove’s 33133 zip code, for instance, would have two lines of three words followed by a line of one word and then two more of three. The poems offer a snapshot of daily life within the writers’ ZIP codes. 

“It is one of the most inspiring, soul-stirring, engaging, and just truly entertaining programs that we produce,” Santiago says, adding that many of the ZipOdes poets are from the Grove. 

“Every single year, it doesn’t matter what the call to action is, Grove residents deliver. They show up. Grovites are very proud of where they live and lyricize their city.” 

That’s true for the Grove residents and poets who created and edited SWWIM, the online publication and residency program that connects visiting and local poets through events at the Betsy South Beach hotel. SWWIM Every Day showcases a woman-written poem each day. 

“I think it’s important for women to have community among each other to validate women’s stories and women’s experiences,” says co-founder, poet, and Coconut Grove resident Catherine Prescott. 

Women are underrepresented in literature, which Prescott notes can cause an erasure of their experiences. SWWIM offers a space for these stories. 

“Any experience can be literary. Whether you’re taking care of elderly parents, birthing or raising children or working in the world, whether you’re having an abortion, having a miscarriage, going through perimenopause or menopause — so many experiences that are endemic to a woman’s life, those can be rich fodder for literary material,” she says. 

SWWIM is hosting a reading on April 10 at the Betsy with visiting writer Chloe Martinez and local author Ximena Gómez. But Prescott assures, “For us, poetry month is year round.” 

The second annual Poetry Night at The Barnacle is 5:30-8:30 p.m., Sunday, April 6 at the Barnacle Historic State Park, 3485 Main Highway, Miami, FL 33133. Entrance is $6, $3 for members of the Barnacle Society. Free for students who submitted a poem, their families, and teachers. Students who do not submit are free if they register in advance and show a student ID. 

SWWIM with Chloe Martinez at The Betsy Writers Room, 7 p.m., Thursday, April 10 at Betsy Hotel South Beach, 1400 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139. Free. 

Choose Your Character: Clothing Swap & Poetry Pop-Up at Vizcaya Village Farmers Market Courtyard. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, April 13 at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, Vizcaya Village Farmers Market Courtyard 3251 South Miami Ave., Miami, FL 33129.

ZipOdes Finale at Vizcaya Late, 6-9 p.m. Wednesday, April 23 at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, 3251 South Miami Ave., Miami, FL 33129. $5.