The O, Miami Poetry Festival is back. This means one thing: it’s time to get up, get out and experience poetry for all. During the month of April, National Poetry Month, O, Miami will use the city and its landscape as a canvas for the literary arts.

O, Miami logo.

“Poetry is a living, breathing force that can light up the city. O, Miami is its platform. The written word leaves the printed page for a parade on South Beach, morphs into interpretive dance in Hialeah, and along the way helps art become part of people’s everyday lives,” says Alberto Ibargüen, president of founding festival sponsor the Knight Foundation.

This year, O, Miami has modest plans. Well, at least plans that involve “The ‘Biggest’ Poetry Reading in the History of Miami,” featuring Poets Laureate Robet Hass and Kay Ryan, as well as National Book Award winner Nikki Finney at the New World Symphony on South Beach (the reading will be projected live onto the 7,000 square foot wall at Soundscape Park). There’s also a Poetry Lottery, created by Augustina Woodgate and Mary Reufle, which consist of 5,000 scratch-off lottery tickets that reveal poems. Also, the first-ever LitCrawl Miami will take place on South Beach. LitCrawl takes the good ol’ pub crawl to a literary sphere where ‘boozy’ poetry performances will be scheduled throughout the city.

These events are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. With more than 30 events scheduled in April, O, Miami amplifies the power of poetry to connect and build culture in city where, I’ve heard over and over, “poetry is dead.” Well, it’s not. In fact, O, Miami also shows us something else: that poetry is vital to our community. And, most importantly, it’s fun!

View the schedule of events here: www.omiami.org.