Photo credit: City of Miami Beach Knight Foundation is founding sponsor of O, Miami, which seeks to enable every person in Miami-Dade County to encounter a poem during the month of April. Below, P. Scott Cunningham, founder and executive director of O, Miami, writes about the poetry festival, which includes an event each day in April and 25 poetry-in-public places projects. This Saturday, April 5, O, Miami is putting poetry on the side of the New World Center in Miami Beach. If you’ve ever been to one of the free movies in SoundScape Park or one of the concert Wallcasts, then you understand the experience. People bring blankets, chairs and picnic baskets to the park and watch the 7,000-square-foot screen and hear everything in surround sound. Combined with the beauty of SoundScape Park, the Wallcasts are one of the most unique urban experiences in America. O, Miami joined forces with New World Symphony and the city of Miami Beach to create a poetic experience on the wall, and Poetry in the Park is the result. The evening begins at 5 p.m. Three separate stages will host performances by musicians and poets, including members of the New World Symphony “house band” Somewhat Hungover, New World Symphony fellows, “Biscayne Poet” Oscar Fuentes, and members of the Miami Poetry Collective doing one of their famous pop-up “Poem Depots.” Miami food favorites such as La Latina, My Ceviche and Feverish Pops will have food for sale and KIND Bar will set up one of their “Flower Walls,” while giving away KIND snacks with poems attached to them.
