P. Scott Cunningham believes that Miami is the most poetic city in the world — and helped residents of the 305 believe it too.
For more than a decade, the nonprofit that Cunningham founded — O, Miami — has been working to bring poetry to the people of Miami-Dade County.
O, Miami started as a festival for National Poetry Month in April 2011 and expanded into a year-round organization. It launched a LeBron James Poetry Contest. It plastered poems on the sides of city buses, printed them on parking tickets and painted them on massive, million-gallon water tanks.
One of the signature projects of O, Miami is the Zip Ode, a novel form of poetry co-created with WLRN. It invites the public to submit 5-line poems, with the numbers in the writer's zip code determining the number of words in each line of the poem.
Cunningham says it’s all part of the group’s mission to build community through the power of poetry — and to craft a new shared narrative of what and who Miami is.
“My faith in poetry really came from doing O, Miami and seeing how people reacted to it,” Cunningham told WLRN.
“When we came up with the impetus of the tagline of the festival — that everyone in Miami should encounter a poem during the month of April — that was very much a poetic exercise. It was something that immediately sounded good. And because it sounded good, we were like, 'Let's do this,'” he said. “But I really had no idea what the implications of that would be.”
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But now Cunningham has announced he’ll be stepping down as the leader of O, Miami effective June 30. He’ll remain on the group’s board of directors, but says he’ll be leaving Miami for new opportunities in Chicago.
O, Miami's long-time senior director, Melody Santiago Cummings, will serve as the organization's interim leader during the search for a new executive director. Interested candidates for the top job can apply here.
Cunningham sat down with WLRN education reporter Kate Payne for an exit interview. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: O, Miami has brought poetry to the most unlikely of places and made poets out of the most unlikely of people. What first pushed you to think any of this was possible – and possible here in Miami?
CUNNINGHAM: When we were doing these projects and events in all corners of Miami, I would just encounter so many people for whom honestly, poetry was more important to them than it was for me in a lot of ways. Because it was symbolic of relationships or nationalities or places that made them who they are. And so through doing that stuff … it really changed how I felt about poetry and what its potential could be.
One of the signature projects of O, Miami is the Zip Ode. For you, what is the magic of that form?
I think everyone's a poet. And I found over the years that people write these brilliant Zip Odes who just don't otherwise write poems. And so for me, that means that all they need is the occasion. They just need to have an invitation.
O, Miami has really mastered that and also taken on what you all call “civic publishing” — really using the whole city as a canvas. What’s been your favorite O, Miami public poetry project?
I've got so many. It really depends on what day you ask me. But the one that comes to mind when you say that is actually the billboard that we did last year, ‘Your Poem Here’. We made a billboard right across from the Miami Heat arena that said ‘Your Poem Here’ and then asked people to submit Zip Odes.
The Zip Ode that won and was selected to put on the billboard was by a librarian from Westchester named Luz Rossy. Someone who was an aspiring writer but never had an opportunity like that I think to have her words so publicly displayed.
The poem was about her grandmother and I think was so relatable to so many people. Just that moment of Luz seeing her words on a billboard in the middle of downtown. It just … yeah, that was amazing. And it reinforces just about how much Miami is about those relationships and those people and the stories of, how am I here? Well I'm here because of my grandmother. And how is she here? That's the story of our city.
O, Miami has gone far beyond the poetry festival every April. You all now host year-round workshops, teach poetry in our public schools, there’s the O, Miami publishing branch. Looking back, what do you see as your legacy?
I think the point of this is that it's not my legacy, you know? The organization was always outward-facing and the work has always been collaborative. The organization is at a point where it's grown so much that it's ready for new leadership and new directions.
We're no longer just a festival. We have an education program that's actually now our biggest program. We're serving over 3,000 students a year. That ecosystem — what we call civic publishing — is really the heart of the organization now.
Twelve months out of the year, we're in schools, we're collecting poems, we're collecting Zip Odes. And so people are giving us all of this brilliant writing. And then our job during the festival is to broadcast that back out to everybody, so their neighbors can read it. So they can hopefully understand the people who live in their neighborhoods a little better.
And Miamians can know that, ‘Oh, this is what the city is about’. And that can create a narrative that oftentimes I find is different from the one that the tourism board is marketing or a real estate company is marketing, you know? To me, it's the real Miami. And that work has always been so much bigger than me.
This is a very particular time in the life of artists and writers in Florida who really feel under attack in many ways with the censorship that we have seen against books and broader discussions about big ideas and big identities in this country. Do you have a message for artists and for writers in this time?
I think it's a message they already know. But it's basically that this place is always worth fighting for. It’s always been a place worth fighting for. And there’s always been people who have fought.
Florida's always been a difficult place to live. And there's always been battles. And there's always been people who have tried to turn it into something other than what I think the people would like it to be. So that fight continues.
For me, I plan to be the most annoying prophet of Florida outside of Florida. And continue to proselytize to people how beautiful this place is. And that the challenges that Florida faces are usually the ones that are coming to your state next. We're often on the frontlines of things and there are so many brilliant people who do that work every single day and their work deserves to be honored and respected.
You have poured so much of yourself into Miami. But now you’ve decided it’s time to move on to Chicago. What of Miami will you bring with you?
Oh, man. All of it! I mean … I really feel like who I am as an artist was created here. I knew I wanted to be a writer before I got to Miami but I wasn't one yet. And this place made me into one. So … it's baked into who I am now. There's no way to take it out. I'll always be a Floridian. I'll always be a Miami writer. And no matter where I go, that's what I'll be.
Could you leave us with a poem? Maybe a final Zip Ode to Miami?
I love the Zip Ode as a form. I'm always just so amazed by what people come up with and how clever and funny and meaningful … and what people can pack into a short amount of space. So I want to preface it with — I am a Zip Ode amateur and I bow before the real experts.
So this is my Zip Ode and I live in 33138: 'The bay so close — but what's closer
is the sun on my back as I am walking home.'
If you want to submit a Zip Ode for this year’s O, Miami poetry festival, we would love to read it! Here’s some inspiration from last year’s contest and more information on how to submit.
