Under The Sun

by Trina Sargalski
Video by Jose Pagliery

The Poem Depot at Write South Florida, a literary event which showcased the winners and runners up of our unpublished writers contest.  Hollywood Public Library, June 2009.

It’s hurricane season.  You know where to go for supplies like wood, batteries and generators, but where do you get a good poem?   You will need a verse that comforts and entertains as you sweat it out inside your (hopefully) airtight home, winds howling against your shutters.

Or maybe you just broke up with a significant other.  You need to add fuel to the fire of your self-pity, and those Phil Collins songs you’ve loaded onto your iPod just aren’t enough.  You need someone to confide in, to alchemize your pain into golden words that perfectly encapsulate your miserable experience.

The Poem Depot is ready to assist.  Writers from the Miami Poetry Collective appear at local events, such as the Wynwood Art Walk and our recent Under the Sun literary events.  They set up their typewriters on a sidewalk or a café table.  For $2 (or more, if you choose), they compose a poem on the topic of your choice.   Do you know any other way to commission a personalized work of art for such a budget price?

The proceeds fund supplies like paper and ink for their poetry anthologies, like the 3-Cent Journal. Each one goes up about a penny, and they sell the journals at these events (they don’t make change).  You probably wonder how these poets make any money charging prices like these, but that’s another story.

So choose your subject, and go see The Poem Depot.  You can give them as much or as little information as you want.  However, for their sake, try not to give them the detailed play-by-play of your break-up.  We have someone else we can refer you to for that.

For more about the Miami Poetry Collective, listen to our story about how young poets make a living.