Please join us for the third online Open Mic poetry sessions hosted with Free Verse on Zoom.

On Sunday March 29, April 5, and April 19, we will host Free Verse Open Mic poetry sessions. For each session a “Poets Respond” prompt will be posted prior to the event. Free Verse poets and the public are invited to write new poems in response to the prompt, and share their poems in an Open Mic format during the hour-long digital zoom meeting the following Sunday. For the third session the prompt is:

Poets Respond: Let’s Dream – Global Viral Healing. Write 1-3 poems about what type of healing – physical, evolutionary, political, spiritual, or economic – is needed now, as the whole world is experiencing the devastating impact of the pandemic. Take us into the vasts of your magical thinking and radical imagination.

This third and final Open Mic will feature international guests from InScena! – The Italian Theater Festival NY, a long-term collaborator of Free Verse. Poets, actors, and playwrights from Italy will be reading Free Verse poems translated into Italian, as we all connect on our experiences of the shared global health crisis of Covid-19.

Join us to share your poems or listen to the readings. The program will be recorded and shared for public viewing after it’s completion. To join the Zoom meeting make sure you have the free zoom app downloaded and installed on your device, and then click on the link provided above at the time of the event. Instructions for using Zoom can be found here. We are also inviting participants to email their poems to communications@queensmuseum.org for a special edition pdf poetry compilation for each of the sessions.

This program is presented as part of the Community Partnership exhibition My Word(s) – These are the tools I trust, which presents text-based art and creative arts programs produced by participants of Free Verse. Initiated in 2012, Free Verse is a poetry workshop, working artists program, publishing house, and magazine that works with people in NYC Department of Probation waiting rooms to turn “waiting time into creative-time.” Poets share experiences with the criminal justice system, family shelters, racial profiling, among other critical social issues. While focused on serving those stuck waiting in probation centers, all workshops, open mics, inclusion in the magazine, and book-making are open to the public. The project has also evolved to offer participants job opportunities as teaching artists as part of a Working Artists Program. 

This program is supported in part by NYC Department of Probation, Poets & Writers, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative.