By Fernando González, Miami-based arts & culture writer

For the next few weeks, poetry is the language of Miami.

But the monthlong O, Miami poetry festival, funded by Knight Foundation, is an ambitious proposition well beyond the literary. This year, the event includes a greater emphasis on Spanish language programming, an approach highlighted by encounters among substantial Cuban poets living stateside and on the island.

This year’s O, Miami offers a chance to hear voices such as Reina María Rodríguez, winner of the National Prize for Literature 2013 in Cuba; Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, one of the leading young figures in Cuban poetry; and the multidisciplinary group Omni-ZonaFranca, but it also includes writers such as José Kozer, a Havana native now a Hallandale resident, recipient of the 2013 Premio de Poesía Iberoamericana Pablo Neruda (the 2013 Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize); and Yosie Crespo, born in Pinar del Río, Cuba, and now a Miami resident, who won the “Nuevos Valores de la Poesía Hispana” prize awarded by Ediciones Baquiana and the Centro Cultural Español in 2011.

“We are trying to do things that are relevant to Miami,” says P. Scott Cunningham, the Boca Raton native who is the festival’s founder and director. “Traditionally, the poetry communities in Miami are very segmented by language. The Spanish language community has its events, the English language community has theirs, and there is not as much crossover as it should be and could be. As we’ve gone forward with O, Miami one of the things we are interested in doing is bridging that gap, creating events in which the different communities can interact, show their work and start to know each other a little better. So … we’ve been making an effort to incorporate Spanish language poets and Spanish language audiences —which are not always the same thing.”

Cunningham calls Crespo and José A. Villar-Portela, O, Miami’s Cuban-born editor and translator, the “linchpins” of the festival’s efforts to reach those audiences.

“When we started the festival in 2011,” says Villar-Portela, “one of the central ideas was to create a poetry festival that wasn’t for Miami but by Miami. And what I mean by that is that we are out to create a literary culture in Miami at a level that hasn’t existed before. The moment is ripe.”

However, that doesn’t mean he believes a literary culture doesn’t exist in Miami, he says. “In fact, there are several literary cultures,” he continues. “You have a literary culture in Little Haiti; you have a literary culture in Little Havana … and they are separated by really big cultural and linguistic divides. But you can get through the cultural divides once you overcome the linguistic divide. Once people can speak to each other they can begin to understand each other, and so the focus of the festival has been negotiating those different spaces so we can create a cohesive, inclusive and diverse literary community that is representative of Miami.”

The authors chosen to appear for the festival originated from “our contact with the Latin American literary community in Miami,” Villar-Portela says. He notes that Kozer and Reina María Rodríguez, “ two of the most important living Cuban poets,” reading together Wednesday, April 9, 2014 at the Edgewater Poetry & Athletics Club at 7 p.m., is rich with meaning. There is a personal aspect — “They are old friends, and they haven’t seen each other in years”  — but it’s also “ representative of a new moment [in Cuban life], a moment that is much more level-headed and productive, a conversation not a screaming match, between different factions and generations of Cuban exiles and citizens.”

(Reina Maria Rodriguez has been also known as the host of an important alternative cultural salon at her rooftop home, the azotea de Reina.)

The festival also presents a reading by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, a member of the Generación Cero group, with Yosie Crespo at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, at Miami Light Project.

“With my peers in Cuba the relationship has always been through books, Internet, email and social media,” Crespo, 34, who moved to the United States when she was 10, explained in Spanish via email. “I made a trip back recently and then I met poets such as Legna Rodriguez, Jamila Medina Ríos, Oscar Cruz, Jorge Enrique Lage and Ahmel Echevarría Peré … They are all part of a new generation creating a new discourse in Cuban literature.”

“To now share a reading with Legna is something fantastic,” continued Crespo. “I knew her work, and when we finally met in person we both agreed: ‘If this [reading] happens it could be so good.’ I hope this is just a beginning, and that there will be many more readings by the many poets of my generation who are here [in the United States] and there [in Cuba].”

For a complete schedule, visit omiami.org.