MIAMI, March 9, 2020 – Throughout the month of April, Miami Dade College (MDC) North Campus and the Carrie P. Meek Entrepreneurial Education Center (MEEC) will celebrate poetry by observing National Poetry Month. Now in its fourth year, the campus officially began celebrating National Poetry Month in 2017, when City of Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado issued an official proclamation that was unveiled at the MEEC. Since then, MDC students have honored the national observance every April by reading and writing poetry on campus.
Students can perform their original work in the EnviroSlams, part of this year’s MDC Live Arts ECOCultura initiative. The North Campus EnviroSlam is at noon on April 1 during the student-led Sustainapalooza Festival that takes place on the lawn west of Building 4000. Winners of the EnviroSlams at each campus will face off at the final EnviroSlam at ECOCultura Fest on April 18 on Virginia Key.
“Each year the North Campus pathways come alive with beautiful poems,” said Dr. Malou C. Harrison, President of the North and Padron Campuses. “It is important to support the arts and highlight the powerful experience of engaging with literature. The goal is to make poems accessible to our community and to encourage students to share their talents.”
An on-going initiative is dubbed Poems, Poems Everywhere. Students, staff, and campus visitors who wander around North Campus and the MEEC during the month of April, will find famous poems emblazoned on campus walkways, digital signage, and in a light projection on the wall outside the North Campus Library (Bldg. 2000).
This year’s celebration of National Poetry Month will focus on food-related themes, in alignment with the 2020 North Campus Learning Community’s focus on United Nations Sustainable Development Goal no. 2: Zero Hunger. The famous poems adorning campus sidewalks and buildings this April will all relate to the Zero Hunger theme, and students will write thematically related poetry of their own.
Students are encouraged to write and submit their own food-related poems to the college-wide competition: Poetry for the Pantry. The contest is open to all current MDC students. Poems must be between 20 and 120 words. Finalists will be selected by a panel of English faculty from across the college, and winning poems will be featured on MDC-TV and at the Food Pantry for Students. The contest is an opportunity to highlight students’ original work in a way that supports the Food Pantry, a resource that MDC provides to students facing food insecurity.
For more information, please email poetrymonth@mdc.edu.