In 2017, Saint Flashlight -- a public art project I co-founded with my childhood friend Molly Gross -- officially took off. Over the next five years, our humble organization executed a series of literary activations that playfully inserted poetry into the public space. And while Saint Flashlight basically disbanded in 2022, I still take pride in its various undertakings. Having recently pitched a new art-and-poetry hybrid exhibition for an NYC art fair, I thought I'd take a moment to acknowledge the various projects Saint Flashlight did during its lively half-decade.
Movie Marquee Poems (2017-18): Saint Flashlight's first major project was the eye-catching takeover of Nitehawk Cinema—Prospect Park's derelict marquee. (The theater was undergoing a major upgrade.) Every month or so, new contributors were enlisted to pen film-themed haiku or movie-genre rhyming couplets. Participants included Marcus Amaker, Pamela S. Booker, Regie Cabico, Cathy Linh Che, Nina Katchadourian, Jason Koo, Lisa Ann Markuson, Diane Mehta, and Purvi Shah and a slew of others. MMP also generated quite a bit of press including articles in The New York Post, the Brooklyn Paper, and the Poetry Society of America website.
The Lost Poem (2018-19): Our sophomore effort at O, Miami poetry festival had volunteers papering the city with "lost dog"-style flyers that drove to a phone bank of recorded verses. The initial iteration included work in Spanish (Legna Rodríguez Iglesias) and Haitian Creole (M.J. Fievre) as well as English (Joan Larkin, Grey Vild...) while a second version at Charleston's Free Verse focused on South Carolina poets: Len Dawson, Lizelia Augustus Jenkins Moorer, et al. TLP then encored at Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, Poets House, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre c/o Capturing Fire, garnering a Q&A with Sacred Chickens and a shoutout from the Poetry Foundation.
Calling the World (2020): During the darkest days of the Coronavirus pandemic when many Americans were in sheltered isolation, SF partnered with the Poetry Society of America to create an interactive dial-a-poem experience for people stuck at home. With just the touch of some buttons, callers were granted access to an international array of voices from PSA's audio archives, such as Nigerian rising star Romeo Oriogun, Mexico's Mónica de la Torre, and Palestine's Mahmoud Darwish (read by translator Fady Joudah) to name but three. You can read more about this endeavor via this interview with CultureSonar.
Read My Palm (2021): This modest Instagram follow-up to Calling the World asked a handful of poets to each create a short "live" video reimagining the poetry reading as more than a talking head. The virtual series -- which utilized Polaroids, Powerpoint, and a divining deck of hand-printed cards -- ran every Thursday at 6pm for five weeks. The creators were three Saint Flashlight alums (Marcus Amaker, Pamela Booker, and Regie Cabico) as well as Saint Flashlight's two cofounders: Molly Gross and myself.
Heart on Your Sleeve (2021-23): To increase universal access to poetry, SF teamed up with the Poetry Project to produce coffee-cup insulation-sleeves that sported epigrams with an eye towards the future. Designed by Hyesu Lee, the sleeves featured memorable quips by Cathy Linh Che, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Eileen Myles, Rochelle Owens, Nicole Sealey, and Irene Villaseñor. SF co-founder Molly Gross (who helmed the project) then rebooted HoYS in Philly with local poets and artists. Further details can be found at WHYY.
The Will of the City (2021-22): This one I took on entirely on my own: concept and curation. The idea? Get a dozen writers to create sonnets inspired by Shakespeare's plays then display them on the streetside and lobby LED screens at Theatre for a New Audience. As a playwright, I was especially pleased that among the sonneteers were dramatists Will Eno, Jeffrey Sweet, Malcolm Tariq, Carol Triffle, Steven Gaultney and Anya Banerjee. Columbia University's School of the Arts gave a sweet plug to two of their grads while Broadway World nodded to the entire roster. Most of the series found a long-term home at the experimental poetry Var2/X.
The above photo of me with my haiku for The Lords of Flatbush was taken across the street from Nitehawk Cinema—Prospect Park by Molly Gross as part of the Movie Marquee Poems project. To read more about Saint Flashlight and the many wonderful contributors, head over to SaintFlashlight.org.
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