Florida Keys Poets’ Work to be Immortalized in Concrete This Friday
Key West Poet Laureate Kirby Congdon will read his award-winning poem as it is unveiled on Friday, permanently stamped into the sidewalk in front of Captain Tony’s Saloon. (Photo by Richard Watherwax)
This Friday, April 25, at 4:00 p.m., an unveiling ceremony will take place in front of Captain Tony’s Saloon, 428 Greene Street, presenting the very first in an ongoing series of poems and verse by Florida Keys writers to be permanently etched into Key West sidewalks.
The result of a Keys-wide contest launched last year by the Key West Art in Public Places Board, more than 200 writers submitted poetry, prose, lyrics and haiku in competition for a cash award and the opportunity to stop residents and visitors in their tracks with their words.
Key West Poet Laureate Kirby Congdon, honored by the competition’s judges for the historic first stamping, will read his selected verse in the company of fellow contest winners, AIPP board members, donors and City dignitaries on Friday.
From planning, to penning, to pressing, the launch of the Key West Sidewalk Poetry Project has been more than a year in development. “The AIPP Board was exploring opportunities to create an ongoing public expression of Key West’s literary tapestry,” said Board Chair Michael Shields. “Arts advocate Carol Schreck, inspired by a similar initiative in St. Paul, Minnesota, suggested paving our sidewalks with poetry.”
“Public Art is traditionally thought of as only sculptural or visual murals,” said Shields. “This project expands our understanding to give poets their own palette, on our pavements – the pages of our city.”
Winning entries for the Key West Sidewalk Poetry Project 2013 were composed by Kirby Congdon, Eden Brown, Margit Bisztray, Fran Decker, Mark Faris, Frieda Feldman, Constance Gilbert, Diane Good, Jennifer Grafiada, Mark Hedden, Janet Marston-Hartwell, Marsh Muirhead, David Sloan, D. Sullins Stuart, Mary Jo Trible, Jonathan Woods, and the youngest winning competitor—Montessori student Isabella Braswell.
Henceforth, as the City goes about its operations of pouring new or replacing broken, cracked, or fractured sidewalks, selected poems will be etched into select pavers creating moments of plein-air reading—a synergy of literary and visual art.
The Key West Art in Public Places Board, whose directors include Shields, Perry Arnold, Dick Moody, Jeff Rodriguez, Richard Talmadge, and Adam Russell, strives to foster an environment that honors, celebrates and demonstrates the value of artistic expression in the public view, in the visual, literary and performing arts. The Key West Sidewalk Poetry Project is produced in cooperation with the City of Key West’s Community Services Department.
I walk on sand
and leave a trail
of footprints,
hard and deep.
The wash of waves
fills my step
in hasty cascades.
Water and sand return,
not quite the same;
the tide, its oceans,
the earth itself
are changed.
-KIRBY CONGDON