We are now accepting proposals from installation and performance artists interested in activating the grounds of 2019’s New York City Poetry Festival!

The New York City Poetry Festival takes great pride in its arts program, which has featured nearly 200 visual, installation, and performances artists over the years. By reaching outside the established poetry communities, The Poetry Society of New York hopes to create new audiences for poetry and facilitate collaborations between poets and other artists.

Milk Press believes strongly in fostering collaborations between poets and artists and will therefore hold its first Milk Press Happening at NYCPOFEST 2019! 

Imagine a space designed to elicit a response. A place so alive with art and stimulus that everyone who experiences it leaves with the seeds of inspiration already sprouting in their minds. Each chamber contains an intentional mix of poetry and visual art, performance and lighting design, climate control and music, fragrances and soundscapes, all unified in their mission to awaken your aesthetic impulse.

Milk Press Happenings is an event series designed to generate artistic collaborations. Each Happening results in a publishing project derived from the work that is presented and created on-site. The Happening at NYCPOFEST 2019 will be activated each day by poets and performance artists, so please feel free to send in your visual, installation, performance, or poetic work for consideration via Submittable.

The Typewriter Project’s inaugural concept, Subconscious of the City, is a series of site-specific literary installations which invite passersby to join in a citywide collaborative poem that exists in both the analog and digital realms.

These typewriter booths are each outfitted with a vintage typewriter, 100-foot long paper scroll, and a custom-built USB Typewriter™ kit, which allows every keystroke to be collected, stored, and posted online for users to read, share, and comment upon. The project is inspired by the idea of an Exquisite Corpse, a surrealist writing game in which several authors contribute to one poem. Each entry can be its own distinct lyric, but we hope that users will also be influenced by what was written before them on the scroll. By creating a new and unique form of public dialogue, this project hopes to capture something of the sound, narrative, and nuance of specific corners of our cities. The project’s mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun and interactive means for the public to engage with the written word. Read the latest entries at subconsciousofthecity.com.

THE POETRY BROTHEL

The Poetry Brothel is an immersive literary cabaret. Inspired by the turn- of-the-century brothels in New Orleans, Paris, and Buenos Aires, many of which functioned as safe spaces where fringe and avant-garde artists could experiment and perform their work, The Poetry Brothel presents a rotating cast of poets, each operating within a carefully crafted character, who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private, one-on-one poetry readings.

At the New York City Poetry Festival, The Poetry Brothel will take over the monument dedicated to Governors Island's founding, located on Colonel's Row, and turn it into their stage for the day. Performances will take place at 1pm, 2pm, and 4:30pm each day. Enjoy poetry, live jazz, vaudeville, mysticism, and more!

For more information, please visit thepoetrybrothel.com. 

Homespun Merry-Go-Round

This quote from Vice pretty much sums it up:

"...a nice man named Al Gori... about 20 years ago, made a merry-go-round from scratch as an art school project. He used car parts, old motors, stuffed animals, gadgets, gizmos, and various knick-knackery, and over years of tinkering, created the most charming and unique little jungle-themed solar-powered merry-go-round that ever was. It is, in fact, a merry-go-round with soul." 

-Vice

POETRY NAP

Slip off your shoes, lie down, relax, and float away to poetry and music of the masters woven into extraordinary, witty and immersive tales guided by Lady and Lord Dosis.

We now have four Chapters to take part in, and each Poetry Nap is a stand alone, self-contained voyage; no need to experience the Chapters in any particular order to absolutely enjoy yourself.

Recline and cuddle with some of the most treasured poets from times past and present such as Pablo Neruda, Joy Harjo, Walt Whitman, Michael McClure, e e cummings, and Gary Snyder to name but a few.

Performances will take place at the monument dedicated to the founding of Governors Island, located on Colonel’s Row from 5:30pm to 7pm on Saturday, July 27th and from 11am to 12:30pm on Sunday, July 28th.

Learn more at poetrynap.com.