Featured Artists
Pop-Up Portraits
HUMAN FLOWER PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS:
POP-UP PORTRAITS
Art, freedom, restorative justice, land re-matriation - from Governors Island to Palestine - our liberation is connected. This community art project highlights our connectedness. Each participant will choose a cut out paper object to place on the photo booth backdrop, so that by the end of the festival we will have a complete picture. We will create a video of all the photos, seeing different participants have their photos taken while we see the backdrop collage grow. This represents how each person’s contribution to collective liberation matters. Without each of our participation, we are not complete.
POETRY PLAYGROUND
THE POETRY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK + PLAY:GROUNDNYC PRESENT:
POETRY PLAYGROUND
July 13, 2025
12pm - 4pm
What do poetry and play have in common? There are no rules. There is a sense of freedom—or the will to push against restrictions on freedom. Poetry and play both begin with an experiment, a spark, a curiosity. Ideas are expanded upon—or abandoned. New ideas arise.
If you’re a child playing at The Yard on Governors Island, you might dig a pit in the ground to see what’s underneath, or climb to the top of a fort to get a new perspective. If you’re a poet you might start with a single word, a line or an image. There are so many ways to play, and so many ways to write!
Please join Rebecca Faulkner, poet and former Executive Director of play:groundNYC, at Nolan Park on July 13 from 12pm - 4pm as she leads an open-ended workshop that combines aspects of “loose parts” or “risky” play—concepts we employ at The Yard, our adventure playground on Governors Island, with found poetry, blackout poetry, and postcard poetry during The New York City Poetry Festival! Make poetry with us, and connect with your inner (or actual) child through the power of play!
play:groundNYC is a nonprofit dedicated to transforming New York City through play. The organization was founded by artists, researchers, and advocates for children’s rights who wanted to create the conditions for adventure play in NYC. This type of play has tremendous benefits for young people’s lives, and their future outcomes. After a series of pop-ups in city parks, play:groundNYC was invited by The Trust for Governors Island to open The Yard, a publicly-accessible adventure playground. Since 2016, we have welcomed more than 60,000 children and young people to The Yard for free open weekends, after-school activities, field trips and summer camp.
All Power To The Living Ancient Woman
ANNA ANU & FOREST FOR TREES COLLECTIVE PRESENT:
ALL POWER TO THE LIVING ANCIENT WOMAN
This installation is a mobile and fixed textile piece composed of ten bold-fabric-sewn bedsheets suspended along a 90-foot clothing line, bearing the phrase: "ALL POWER TO THE LIVING ANCIENT WOMAN, STEWARD OF LAND AND PEACE." Inspired by Diane di Prima’s “All power to joy,” the work honors ancestral feminine wisdom. It draws from the “Grandmother Hypothesis” to advocate for the re-centering of elder women in cultural and ecological leadership. When in motion, the piece is carried by multiple participants who weave it through spaces such as the walkways of Nolan Park and Colonel's Row, activating it as a living protest. In its resting form, it is mounted between free-standing dowels with a pulley system that scrolls the full message, fitting within a 10'x10' footprint.
About the Artist: An interdisciplinary and intersectional ecofeminist artist, Anu’s work explores poetry through the material and closely considers the importance of grandmothers in restorative justice, and a possible futurity. A published author, filmmaker, exhibiting visual artist, and climate education strategist, Anu creates in celebration of elder feminist luminaries, botanics, myth, and semiotics. Coalescing provocative language, pop iconography, and wisdom traditions, their work initiates public discourse on environmental justice. Anu is the Founder and Art Director of Forest For Trees Collective.
Poetry Fortunes
CYN GRACE SYLVIE PRESENTS:
POETRY FORTUNES
The “Poetry Fortune” Tent is an interactive installation inviting participants to engage in a communal exchange of poetic insight. Inside the tent, visitors are encouraged to take a pre-written poetry fortune from one box and leave their own in another.
About the Artist: Cyn Grace Sylvie (she/they) is a queer performer and spiritual worker whose work explores the internal drives and desires of the human experience through the lens of diaspora, mythology, sexuality, and mysticism. Cyn is a recipient of Epiphany Magazine’s 2017 Short Nonfiction Prize, and was long-listed as a Notable Nonfiction Selection in, ‘The Best American Essays of 2018’ (Mariner Books). Her work performed at the Whitney Biennial, and featured in The Rumpus, BRKFST Biannual, MATH Magazine, Aoetearotica Magazine, Dewdrop, Beyond Words, Daughter Zine and The Literary Review. A graduate of Drexel University, she is a creative director by profession, an oracle by calling, and a fatalist by design. She resides in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The People’s Poetry Cart
JAYSHAWN LEE + CLIMATE IMAGINARIUM PRESENTS:
THE PEOPLE’S POETRY CART
The People’s Poetry Cart is a mobile literary installation that invites festival-goers to slow down, reflect, and co-create in a world that often demands speed and consumption. Rooted in typewriter poetry, climate consciousness, and creative reciprocity, the cart brings poetry into public spaces through participatory activations that spark joy, memory, and collective care. Led by poet and performance artist Jayshawn Lee, the cart transforms into a hub for on-the-spot poem-making, writing rituals, and seed-worthy connections. Whether guests are typing, gifting, planting, or simply witnessing—every interaction is an invitation to reimagine our relationship with language, land, and one another.
About the Artist: Jayshawn Lee is a Harlem-based poet, installation artist, and human rights advocate whose work merges creativity, public engagement, and social impact. They transform everyday spaces into poetic encounters through typewritten improvisation, participatory storytelling, and sustainable design. Their work has been featured on the Today Show and presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian Museums, Amnesty International, and Campari through their role at Ars Poetica. Jayshawn’s Climate Haikus installation—a zero-waste, interactive poetic archive—was nominated for the Human Impacts Institute’s Creative Climate Awards for its collaborative vision, inviting embroiderers, poets, and climate justice organizers to respond collectively to the climate crisis. As an educator, Jayshawn has taught Solarpunk Artistry poetry workshops with the NYC Climate Writers Collective and led typewriter and performance workshops through Poet’s House. They also served as Poet-in-Residence for Amnesty International USA’s Banned Book Café, creating custom poems on human rights and social impact. A graduate of NYU Gallatin and Columbia’s Human Rights MA program, Jayshawn continues to expand poetry beyond the page—building spaces for connection, reflection, and collective action.
strikethrough 48
MAXINE FLASHER-DÜZGÜNEŞ PRESENTS:
STRIKETHROUGH 48
“strikethrough 48” is a multi-sensory, interactive installation that explores the layers of erasure poetry through animation, sound, and movement. Centered on a poem about life, loss, and mental health in a country marked by natural beauty and systemic neglect, the piece invites participants to physically alter hanging and wall texts using charcoal and natural materials. e. Featuring original sound by composer Michael Wall, projected animation by Jade Lien and Irene Lin, and live performances by dancers, the installation creates an evolving landscape of text, emotion, and embodied presence.
About the Artist: Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş is a Turkish-American poet, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Northern California engaging with the disciplines of choreography and visual art as tools for grasping poetic language. Her work critically investigates how poetics can serve as a thread in understanding where the body belongs in the vastly changing ecosphere. She has served as artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artist Program (CA), Tofte Lake Center (MN), Surel's Place (ID), and Center at Eagle Hill (MA), and has been commissioned for Scenofest: World Stage Design 2022 (CAN), 92NY’s Future Dance Festival 2023 (NY), and FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival 2024 (CA). Her dance and poetry films have received official selection from festivals including kNOwBOX Dance Film Festival (TX, ROK & MEX), The Poetic Lens: Millennium Film Workshop (NY), Cadence Video Poetry Festival (WA), Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema (CO), and SzólóDuó International Dance Festival (HU). Her choreographic poetry platform, strikethrough-score.org, has been presented nationwide at Noori/TWIG Media Lab (UT), Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (NY, and Mark Foehringer Dance Project (CA), and published with Poethesis Mag (UK), LOCULUS Collective (MA), and Pinky Thinker Press (NJ). She currently covers the global dance scene for Dance Art Journal, teaches with California Poets in the Schools and Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and directs Marin County's first Youth Poet Laureate Program. Maxine received a B.F.A. in Dance (magna cum laude) from NYU Tisch and an M.A. in Dance Philosophy (with distinction) from University of Roehampton London as a US-UK Fulbright Finalist.