“The Poet Sculpture” was a poetry intervention. It was a collaborative performance on a sculpture that engaged an audience that was transient. The project was designed to get poets and poetry out of the open mic circuit, and into the public sphere.

The project focused on the formation and words of poets to define the sculpture via collective action, group decisions, and word (sound) waves. “The poet sculpture” was in flux, with poets not performing one at a time, but together, interweaving their words, creating a sculpture (“poem”), while physically interacting. There was a mix of pausing and interrupting. The most important part of this performance was the response, reaction, and exchange from the poet/sculpture to the audience/passersby.

Poet Sculpture: The installation is a moveable platform, made out of different sized crates. Each individual crate is designed for a departed writer. Performers stood on Julia de Burgos, Jayne Cortez, ee cummings, Allen Ginsberg, Barbara Guest, Langston Hughes, Tuli Kupferberg, Taylor Mead, Frank O’Hara, and Pedro Pietri.

Poets: Vito Acconci, Hala Alyan, Isak Berbic, Natalia De Campos, Michael Carter, Steve Dalachinsky, Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, Megan DiBello, Daniel Dissinger, David Grubbs, Aimee Herman, Samuel Jablon, Paolo Javier, Vincent Katz, Amy King, Chrissy Malvasi, Maria Mirabal, Nikhil Melnechuk, Najee Omar, Yuko Otomo, Marissa Perel, Poets in Unexpected Places, Joseph A. W. Quintela, Peter Rugh, Moira Williams, and Emanuel Xavier.