Please help fund the projection of New York's poems onto buildings around town using a high-powered 10,000-lumen digital projector. By imagining the sides of buildings as blank pages for the dramatic presentation of the poet's work we engage our community in a creative and innovative act of reading, we reinforce the value of those poems and provide a dramatic backdrop for their words.
Check out the project at KickStarter
We kick off the Poetry Projection: A White Wing Brushing the Building with the poems of the West African community in the Bronx, including the work of our Griot-in-Residence, Papa Susso!
The technology for the projections will be provided by media partner, Local Projects, whose many credits include being lead exhibition designers for The National September 11th Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center.
The vehicle that transports the projector is the Pizza-Poetry Mobile sponsored by Two Boots Pizza. This unique art delivery concept was created in partnership with City Lore and Bowery Poetry Club.
Imagine a colorful food truck festooned with poems and outfitted on top with a state-of-the-art digital projector, parked on the corner of a high traffic street corner, blasting laser poems on near-by buildings, the Pizza Person reciting poems, and distributing delicious “Poetry Pie,” pizza slices.
Project Directors, Gary Glazner, Bob Holman, and Steve Zeitlin will work with 12 ethnic poetry groups, including poetry clubs and small presses from the Persian, West African, Yemeni, South Asian, Egyptian, Russian, Basque, Sicilian, Russian, Yiddish, Filipino, and Mexican poetry communities, among others. We will work with community groups to select poems for the projections. Each project event will include a performance of the poems.
The project title comes from Martin Espada's lines: “God must be an owl, electricity coursing through the hollow bones, a white wing brushing the building.”
Help celebrate the poetry of New York -- the poetry of the World!
