Author and poet Sarah Trudgeon lives in the small town of Great Barrington, Mass., but she stays connected to South Florida through ZipOdes — the five-line poems inspired by your zip code.
Trudgeon lived in Key Biscayne on and off for years and still comes back annually, but what gives her a revealing and honest glimpse into what South Floridians are thinking and doing, is the thousands of ZipOdes she reads every year.
📍 What is a ZipOde? They're five line poems based on where you live, with each number of your zip code determining the number of words in that line.
📥 Submit a poem at wlrn.org/zipodes. Chosen poems will be presented at our ZipOdes finale at Vizcaya Museums and Gardens
“ The poems are just so good and so surprising and so wonderful,” Trudgeon told WLRN.
When O, Miami’s founder and former executive director P. Scott Cunningham called Trudgeon in 2015 to ask if she’d be interested in reading the ZipOdes as they came in; she said yes, but had no idea how far-reaching it would be.
It was 2015, and O, Miami and WLRN had just come up with the ZipOde form.
READ MORE: This West Kendall poet wrote the first ever ZipOde. Ten years on, South Florida still inspires her
“ We received 3,566 poems, which is a lot and I had agreed to type them all up also onto Tumblr,” said Trudgeon. “It was this huge success and it was really wonderful, and so they decided that it would just have to happen every year since then.”
Ten years later and in a Western Massachusetts zip code, Trudgeon still looks forward to reading ZipOdes every year. During National Poetry Month in April, she chooses 10 selects a week that O, Miami and WLRN highlight on their social media platforms.
All spotlighted poets are then invited to read their poems at the ZipOdes Finale at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens.
With her blue-light glasses on hand, Trudgeon says there’s spreadsheet after spreadsheet that she has to look through.
“ O, Miami is always saying this thing that Miami is the most poetic city in the world,” said Trudgeon. “The city has so many beautiful writers and thinkers and the poems are funny and sharp and witty and revealing about the city.
“What people in Miami and South Florida are thinking and doing every year is a great surprise.”
WLRN recently spoke to Trudgeon about her decade as a ZipOdes judge and editor. She talked about how she still manages to stay surprised and moved by what people submit.
This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
WLRN: You've published in The Paris Review and The Yale Review, among other literary magazines and journals. Can you talk to me about what makes a ZipOde really sing in your eyes? Is there anything in particular you look for when you're reading through submissions?
TRUDGEON: The form of the ZipOde, it functions really well to get people thinking about, you know, ‘I've only got a certain number of words and I've got a certain number of lines and I have to condense my thoughts into this form, and I have to choose my words carefully.’ And so, the form itself really helps create good poems to start.
I choose ten selects a week throughout the month of April every year, but there are just hundreds more that are just equally as wonderful, and it's because this form really helps people, I think, put their thoughts and feelings about their neighborhoods into words. So, to start, they're all just so great.
But the select poems, there are so many different ways that they can stand out. I think I look in a zip code for the same things that I would look for in any poem. I want a poem that to summarize could make you laugh and cry in just those five lines. And ones that are surprising, I think that that's something I look forward to.
"I love to see these places, not just through my eyes, but through the eyes of everybody else who lives there. It's really magical. It's like having x ray goggles."
Every year at WLRN and O, Miami’s ZipOdes Finale, there’s a part of the introductions when we “do the numbers” – a nod to the Marketplace Business Review segment that always uses the phrase “let’s do the numbers” – and, for the better part of a decade, you've shared the numbers for ZipOde submissions. Can you tell us some of the numbers that you've tallied up? How many ZipOde submissions more or less come in every year? Was there a particular year that had the most submissions?
There have already been over a thousand submissions in 2025. I feel like it's gonna be a big year. It's our 10th year. I think it's gonna be really big. So, not including this year, there have been 16, 261 total ZipOdes. 2015 was the highest year with 3,566 zip codes. And I always try to look for each year, what's the most poetic zip code, which zip code has submitted the most poems, and the highest submitting poet every year.
And also by county. There are themes, this is another really wonderful thing about ZipOdes is that the themes change over the years and show you what people in South Florida are thinking about. For example, in 2022, there were a lot of poems about saying the word ‘gay.’
Or in 2021, there were a lot of poems about the pandemic or being alone or about masks. In 2019, news broke about family separation, there was a lot of poems about that and detention centers. In 2018, there were a lot of Odes to Parkland, so there are these themes that come up that have to do with the news. But also there are sort of random themes that come out, or random places have learned about ZipOdes and submit. One year there will be a lot of ZipOdes from the state of Georgia, or one year there were a lot from the Bronx, and so I try to think about what themes are coming up and include those in the numbers so people have a sense of what's on people's minds.
And then there's also like these grand tallies for all 10 years so far, and I'm sort of working on that, too.
Like you mentioned, the themes change every year. Is there one that kind of just sticks? Every year you've noticed there's like specific themes that just pop up over and over again.
There are these very South Florida things. Every year there are poems about stealing your neighbor's mangoes. And there's always a poem about the afilador, the knife sharpening truck.
Tons of mangoes. Lots of suns. Lots of creatures of all kinds. Always iguanas and alligators and peacocks. There's always hurricanes. People talking about the way neighborhoods come together after a hurricane. Always poems about traffic, lots of palm trees, lots of dogs and cats. But then also, things that are common, I think, in poetry in general, lots of poems about love and your soul and what makes a good life.
How many zip codes have you written yourself, and if you have one that's your favorite?
Zip Odes are really hard to write for me, it turns out. Also, this is another problem, my zip code in Massachusetts is 01230, and so I have really very few words to work with. Even though the zero is a wildcard line, you could put as many words as you want in it. It doesn't feel right. So I'm still working out how to write the perfect Massachusetts zip code. I think I sent one to the WLRN team once that said:
I
wish I
was in Miami
And that was my Zip Ode.
Has being involved with O'Miami and Zip Odes, I know you don't live in South Florida anymore, but I'm wondering if it's helped you kind of appreciate this place, this very unique place that is South Florida. If not, what has O'Miami and being involved with Zippos inspired in you?
I definitely have come to appreciate so much of South Florida through Zip Odes. I was there recently for a few weeks and there's not a place that I go that I don't think of a Zip Ode. I went downtown to eat dinner and there, you know, you look at the courthouse and I think of the poems about roosters at the courthouse.
Every single spot has a Zip Ode and I love to see these places, not just through my eyes, but through the eyes of everybody else who lives there. It's really magical. It's like having x ray goggles, but I'm reading the thoughts of the people who have lived in these places and passed by them.
And O, Miami is just the best. I worked with O, Miami when I lived in Miami for a couple of years, and I helped start their poetry in schools program, which then was The Sunroom. And when I left and moved here, I now also run a poetry in schools program here in Western Massachusetts, and I think all the time about those first classes that I taught with another poet called Laurel Nakanishi, and that has just informed everything that I do now.
It's been a huge part of my life. I'm so grateful for them.
If there's someone out there who wants to write a Zip Ode, but maybe they're feeling stuck, what advice would you give them to spark inspiration?
I don't know how all these people are writing perfect poems all the time. I guess my advice would be to go look and read Zip Odes that have already been written and I think they're all posted on O, Miami's Instagram and maybe WLRN's Instagram and just sort of go back and look through them all, and that would probably spark something in you.
I think the other way to do it is through memory. Just one little specific thing that happened in a place. I think sometimes people try to write a big, long list of things, and that can work. But I think it also can be very special if it's just, you're thinking of it as one moment, or one little snapshot. Maybe it's not your whole zip code that you're capturing, but just one tiny little slice of it.
This year marks 10 years of ZipOdes. WLRN and O, Miami are taking submissions for 2025. You can submit your ZipOde here.
