Poem District

The Poem District transforms the neighborhoods around our Brooklyn storefront into an open-air anthology, with dozens of poems on the walls of buildings in the coming years. Sites will include bookstores, public schools, community gardens, cafes and restaurants, offices of local civic and cultural organizations, and public housing developments. The project will include a mix hand-painted and vinyl installations, and will feature poets from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Designed by Other Means, a Brooklyn graphic design studio specializing in language and type treatments, the poems are installed by Will Van Zee of Van Zee Sign Co. and Johnny Rivera at Nela Visual. The Poem District is supported by the New York City Department of Small Business Services through the Public Realm Grant program and the Destina Foundation.

Locations

Atelier Ariana, 478 Smith Street
“Greet You” by Claude de Burine, translated from the French by Martin Sorrell

Arab-American Family Support Center, 386 Atlantic Avenue
“A Prayer” by Najwan Darwish, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Books Are Magic, 225 Smith Street
“Dali’s Fear of Grasshoppers” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Breakfast by Salt’s Cure, 368 Court Street
“The First Toast” by Aria Aber

Emma’s Torch, 345 Smith Street
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

Levant on Smith, 223 Smith Street
“Across the Way” by Pierre Reverdy, translated from the French by Patricia Terry

Malin+Goetz, 131 Smith Street
“The Work” by Noelle Kocot

North Pacific Playground, 473 Pacific Street
“Tree Tree Tree” by Carmen Giménez

P.S. 261, 314 Pacific Street
“Endangered Haiku” by Craig Santos Perez

Poets

Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the United States. Her debut poetry collection, Hard Damage, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. Her first novel, Good Girl, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in Fiction, the New Adult Prize, and longlisted for the Center of Fiction’s Debut Prize. Aber divides her time between Vermont and Brooklyn.

Claude de Burine was born in Nièvre, France, in 1931. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry and received the Louise-Labé Prize and the Max Jacob Prize, among others.

Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published nine poetry books in Arabic, and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his books Nothing More to Lose and Exhausted on the Cross, describes him as “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets.” He has received several awards, including The Sarah Maguire Prize and the Cilento International Poetry Prize. He has cofounded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as an advisor to several Palestinian and Arab cultural initiatives and literary festivals. He has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.

Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry and Be Recorder, which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize in 2020. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, she served as the publisher of Noemi Press for twenty years. She is Publisher and Executive Director of Graywolf Press.

Noelle Kocot is the author of many collections of poetry, including Ascent of the Mothers, God's Green Earth, Soul in Space, The Bigger World, and a book of translations of Tristan Corbière, Poet by Default. They are the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Fund for Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and a residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Kocot has taught at the University of Texas New Writers' Project and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the New School. They are the poet laureate of Pemberton Borough, New Jersey.

Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations. She is best known for her sonnet to the Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus,” which was read at the Statue of Liberty’s dedication on October 28, 1886, and engraved on the pedestal in 1903.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of the poetry book Night Owl, and two illustrated collections of essays, Bite by Bite and World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote four previous award-winning poetry collections:Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. For a decade, she served as the poetry editor for Orion and Sierra magazines. A professor of English and Creative Writing for over twenty-five years, she also serves as a firefly guide for Mississippi State Parks.

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is the coeditor of six anthologies; the author of poetry collections, including Habitat Threshold and his ongoing from unincorporated territory series; and the author of the monograph, Navigating CHamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization. Perez has received the National Book Award for Poetry, the American Book Award, the Pen Center USA Literary Prize, the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council Award, the Nautilus Book Award, and the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Associated Writing Programs.

Pierre Reverdy was born in Narbonne in the south of France. At age twenty-one, he moved to Paris and became close friends with the artists and writers around Montmartre, particularly with the poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Juan Gris. In 1926, after publishing several books of poetry that included collaborations with Gris, Picasso, and Georges Braque, he moved to the village of Solesmes to be near the Benedictine monastery at St. Peter’s Abbey. During the Nazi occupation, he joined the Resistance, refused to publish anything, and wrote the excruciatingly brutal Le Chant de morts (Song of the Dead) that was eventually published in 1948 with illustrations by Picasso.