5 min read

Everyone Has Permission –
O, Miami redefined what a poetry festival can be

Photo credit: Chantal Lawrie

Overview

On April 22, 2014, a strangely familiar man rode a white horse down Calle Ocho, the heart of Cuban Miami. The man was an actor, hired to portray Cuban national hero and acclaimed poet José Martí. Martí died in 1898, but as his reincarnated likeness passed, helpers handed out white roses bearing his poems.

As the horse trudged on, unsuspecting elderly Cubans gathered to witness the unlikely event. Many recited lines of poetry they had learned in childhood.

“These viejitos were following us as we’re all walking down Calle Ocho. And then – my parents coming, my grandmother getting the roses. Something happened there,” says Melody Santiago Cummings, executive director of O, Miami. “I felt changed.”

Welcome to O, Miami –– possibly the world’s most inventive and dynamic poetry festival.

Seamlessly dovetailing between the whimsical and the heartfelt, the festival has become a Miami institution since it rose up from the ashes of a city that was a major epicenter of the 2008 financial crisis.

As families lost homes and businesses shuttered, the city experienced a renaissance driven by artists and visionaries eager to activate the sudden surplus of inexpensive studio space.

In 2009, Knight Foundation provided seed funding to an experimental poetry project, the University of Wynwood, the brainchild of poet and essayist P. Scott Cunningham. Three years later, Knight funded O, Miami, a citywide poetry festival, the natural outgrowth of that early experiment.

Unlike most poetry festivals, there was not one venue, one ticket, one wristband. Instead, The O, Miami festival named an impossible-sounding mission that it pursued with creativity and flair: to ensure that everyone in Miami encountered a poem during April, National Poetry Month.

All manner of poetry events have been held over the ensuing annual festivals. There have been readings by emerging and established poets, yes. But also, poetry has found itself embedded in events like a Poetry Is Dead mock funeral procession, athletic competitions, oyster tastings, underwater poetry in a hotel pool, a poetry-themed remake of 2 Fast 2 Furious and a Bad Bunny lookalike contest.

Photo credit: Gesi Schilling
Caroline Cabrera and Melody Santiago Cummings. Photo credit: Gesi Schilling.

Places where Miamians have encountered poetry:

Fruit stickers in supermarkets
Pints of ice cream
Girl Scout cookies
Freshly poured concrete sidewalks
Urinals
Miami Metrorail tickets
Airplane banners
Bus stops
Labels stitched into T-Shirts on store racks
Two rooftops visible to travelers flying in and out of Miami International Airport
Sandwiches
Beach sand

In 2019 Knight provided a major non-project grant that helped O, Miami plant deeper roots as an organization that could look towards the future. By then, the once-affordable real estate market of the festival’s early days had swelled into one of the most expensive in the nation, putting pressure on O, Miami and other cultural organizations.

“You don’t want your success to be totally reliant on one funder –– and I think we’ve been able to mature out of that –– but had it not been for Knight, we would not be here,” says Santiago Cummings.

In recent years, the festival has expanded significantly, evolving into a year-round organization. Teachers across South Florida now incorporate poetry into their classrooms using O, Miami’s Sunroom curriculum. An annual summer apprenticeship program has become an incubator for artists of all mediums. The organization regularly publishes books, ranging from poetry to prose, from quirky poetry about Miami’s weird side to children’s books and anthologies tackling transportation, climate change and gun violence.

The team has also begun to offer creative services to local governments and businesses, helping fill funding gaps while advancing its mission. Storefronts and construction sites throughout the city now routinely feature poetry written by South Florida residents.

“Our problem is that we do too much to effectively tell the story of who we are and what we do,” jokes artistic director Caroline Cabrera.

Impact at a glance

Since 2011…

875 events or projects produced
30 titles published
2,755 Miami-Dade County students served
Dozens of classroom poetry anthologies distributed
More than 42,000 poems collected

In 2025 alone…

More than 150 events held in four languages
Eighteen artists mentored
56 poems displayed on windows and storefronts
Thousands of books sold
9,000 poetry fruit stickers placed on produce in three languages
90 pounds of plastic recycled into poetry
410 linear feet of poetry fences installed throughout Miami
466 poems exchanged for bread

The Impact

Since 2011…

875

Events or projects produced since 2011
2,755

Miami-Dade County students served
90

Pounds of plastic recycled into poetry in 2025

Photo credit: Gesi Schilling
Photo credit: Gesi Schilling

During April, the festival really does feel like it is everywhere. A decade-and-a-half partnership with public radio station WLRN means poems are broadcast to commuters during rush hour throughout the month. The collaboration also spawned an entirely new poetry form: the ZipOde.

In a ZipOde, the numbers in a given zip code determine the number of words in a line, and the resulting poem must be about that specific place. Public radio listeners began submitting ZipOdes in 2015; to date, more than 20,000 poems have been collected. An anthology published on the tenth anniversary of the ZipOde pairs poems collected over the years with photography.

ZipOdes have spread across the country, with versions of the poetry form and related events have popped up in Massachusetts, Ohio, Maryland and beyond.

The key to O, Miami’s success is a deeply felt love for its namesake city, in all of its diversity.

“We are a placemaking organization,” says Cabrera. “If an idea can spark a conversation about this place or lead to true moments of self-expression in this space and celebrate it in all its complexity, we will entertain it.”

Daniel Rivero is an investigative reporter with WLRN Public Radio in Miami. How work has been featured in the Miami Herald, NPR, the Guardian, ABC News and other outlets. His first book, Just Freedom: Inside Florida’s Decades-Long Voting Rights Battle, was published in 2025.

“We are a placemaking organization. If an idea can spark a conversation about this place or lead to true moments of self-expression in this space and celebrate it in all its complexity, we will entertain it.”