Poetry for the People, in Public Spaces

A year of confinement and circumscription, 2020 has altered New Yorkers’  relationship to place. KC Trommer, Nadia Q. Ahmad and Jared Harél are  better equipped than most to capture this state of heightened  site-specificity. The three writers are, respectively, the founder and  board members of Queensbound, a collaborative effort to showcase poets from the eponymous borough. Launched in 2018, the project maps individual writings onto subway stops throughout Queens, reframing  the connective tissue of public space as something with a deeper  emotional resonance. Conceived as a blend of audio recordings, in-situ  readings, and other live events, like most things this year, Queensbound  has lived more online than in physical space. Yet to hear Trommer,  Ahmad, and Harél tell it, the spirit of public space — those  negotiations and celebrations of difference; those struggles and joys of  common pursuit — remains much more than a literary device. Along with  works by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Meera Nair, and Malcolm Chang, we hear  about what it means to bring poetry to the people of Queens, whether by  train or web browser. https://urbanomnibus.net/2020/12/poetry-for-the-people-in-public-spaces/