Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
W. H. Auden famously said, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Recently anointed St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro and the Unity Community collective he organized respectfully disagree.
The now-retired Lindenwood professor, founder of River Styx, and author of numerous poetry books and translations, has two goals as poet laureate: first, to promote poetry, and second, to promote peace, especially in our conflicted city of St. Louis. His plan to achieve these goals was to organize the Unity Community of Presenters, a group of poetry and its allied arts presenters, curators, organizers, educators, editors, on-air hosts, and, of course, poets.
Castro was inspired by “a sense that, as Poet Laureate, particularly at this moment in St. Louis history, I wanted to not only promote the art of poetry in all of its manifestations but also, in the process, to promote the unity, empathy, and cross-cultural communication so needed in our region.”
In a city fraught with divisions and tensions, Michael Castro was a particularly pragmatic choice for St. Louis Poet Laureate. A longtime advocate for social justice, the former editor and retired professor straddles—and has the potential to bridge—many disparate communities. Unity Community reflects that diversity and includes M. K. Stallings of UrbArts, Roseanne Weiss of St. Louis Regional Arts Commision, Cheeraz Gormon of Night Writers Workshops, River Styx, Chris Parr of Chance Operations, Drucilla Wall of St. Louis Poetry Center's Poetry at the Point, Terence Dixon and Alison Rollins of Lost Poets Reading Series, Pacia Anderson of Blank Space, Sean Arnold of the Foam Summer Reading Series, Lenny Smith of Soulard Poets, Darlene Roy of the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club, independent producer Susan Spit-Fire Lively, Rabbi James Stone Goodman from Neve Sholom and Central Reform Congregations, Ann Haubrich of KDHX’s Literature for the Halibut, and many more.
Though consensus in any collective can be painstaking, this diverse group seems determined to put actions behind words. One of the first things the group came up with? Brick City Poetry Festival.
The festival runs from Thursday, September 17, through Monday, September 21. Several details remain to be finalized, but the core festival includes the following events at a glance:
Thursday September 17, 8 p.m.: On the corner of North 14th and Montgomery,
the 4th Annual Shakespeare in the Streets: The World Begun, an original play
by Nancy Bell, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The play is directed by
Jacqueline Thompson. (The play runs through September 19.)
Friday, September 18, UrbArts, 9 p.m.: Lyrical Therapy open mic reading featuring the VerbQuake youth slam team
Saturday, September 19, Regional Arts Commission, 7:30 p.m.: A Celebration of the Book featuring poets who’ve published recent collections, including Cheeraz Gormon, Shirley LeFlore, Darlene Roy, Howard Schwartz, and others. Music by James Stone Goodman.
Sunday, September 20, Foam, 7 p.m.: Sunday Summer Spoken Word Series grand finale featuring Treasure Shields Redmond, Nicky Rainey, Sean Arnold, Jason Vasser, and Elizabeth Vega.
Monday, September 21, River Styx at the Tavern, 7:30 p.m.: Night of the Poets Laureate, featuring St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro and East St. Louis Poet Laureate Eugene B. Redmond. Music by Henry Claude and Tracy Andreotti.
The poetry festival is the first of its kind in St. Louis, a city already rich with literary history—being the home of T. S. Eliot, Sarah Teasdale, William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Maya Angelou, and Pulitzer Prize winners and U.S. Poets Laureate Howard Nemerov and Mona Van Duyn, to name a handful. Plans are already in the works for next year’s festival, which will include a key-note speaker and poets from the broader poetry communities. But it’s a first step, the first bricks.
Plans are also underway for other community and neighborhood projects for Unity Community. The group is organizing and sponsoring readings and events across St. Louis, from the Focal Point to the Julia Davis Library. A new reading series—South Grand’s Lost Poets movable readings series—has sprung up and kicks off its series in October. More bricks.
“My hope is that poetry will be recognized as the soul-beat of the city, and valued as such,” says Castro. “And that our efforts contribute to the healing that must take place.”
Despite Auden’s misgivings during his time, Michael Castro believes that poetry can make some things happen in ours, though perhaps not immediately. “The reader or listener engaged with a poem is transported beyond the self-imposed boundaries of self, often to a state of oneness with the consciousness of another. Such experiences of empathy and unity shapes us as humans. Auden may be right if referring to instantaneous societal change. But I say in a poem, ‘Poems are seeds that lead to deeds.’”
Richard Newman’s most recent poetry collection is All the Wasted Beauty of the World (Able Muse Press, 2014). He has served as editor of River Styx for 20 years, plays in the junk-folk band The CharFlies, and lives in the Tower Grove East neighborhood.
Note: this story was updated on September 8 to reflect the fact that Shakespeare in the Streets, kicking off September 17, is also on the Brick City schedule.
