You can relax with a wide range of poetry at fifth annual festival on Governors Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Governors Island
Colonels Row
July 25-26, free (donation suggested), 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
newyorkcitypoetryfestival.com
new york city poetry festival slideshow
The fifth annual New York City Poetry Festival, which continues Sunday on Governors Island, honors Gotham’s literary heritage with three stages named after a trio of iconic landmarks, the Algonquin, the White Horse, and Chumley’s. Poets from dozens of publishing houses, university presses, and nonprofit organizations read their works, in addition to the open mic Ring of Daisies and other places where poetry just pops up. There are lots of booths, a food truck, and a beer garden that declares that “the psychiatrist is in.” Walking across the big field, you can listen as one poem from one location morphs into one from another and then one from another in a kind of audio rainbow of words and expression. You can make visible poetry with Rachel Ossip’s interactive “to touch” installation, add your own epitaph to Christine Stoddard’s “Word Graveyard,” get a word as part of Maya Stein and Amy Tingle’s Tandem Poetry Project, and hang out with Karl C. Leone’s “Dionysia: A Bacchic Ode” (featuring art by Alexis Myre, music by Larkin Grimm, and live performances by Daniel Benhamu, Aron Canter, Nettie Chickering, Jochem le Cointre, Eli Condon, Mateo d’Amato, Hailey Kemp, Rafeh Mahmud, Siever O’Connor-Aoki, Olivia Porter, Vanessa Rose, and Michelle Rosen). Be sure to also check out building 407b for the Children’s Poetry Festival, Amy Bassin and Mark Blickley’s “Dream Streams,” the analog participatory “Typewriter Project: The Subconscious of the City,” and the Poetry Brothel, where you can get an extremely private one-on-one reading for a small fee. As an added bonus, stop by LMCC’s “(Counter) Public Art, Intervention & Performance in Lower Manhattan from 1978-1993” exhibition at the Arts Center at Governors Island to see video of John Kelly’s Love of a Poet piece from 1990.