Living with Poetry

Organized within the frame of the O, Miami Poetry Festival, Living with Poetry draws inspiration from Nicanor Parra’s antipoesia and anti-poems in order to create an experience that draws from visual, literary, and spoken poetry.

For this project Guatemalan-based duo BIP (Bureau of Public Interventions) are working with, in, and around O, Miami’s Edgewater Poetry and Athletics Club collaborating with neighbors, local poets, and the artist Federico Herrero.

BIP’s mediation of the festival’s "homebase" not only serves as a reflection on how notions of the visual and the literal intersect, but also on how conceptions of public and private space are formulated.

Painted lines leading out from the house direct visitors to 1) a guardrail decorated with Parra's poetry; 2) the closest place to get a cafecito; and 3) a hammock in an open green space.

BIP is a collaborative project by Stefan Benchoam and Christian Ochaita that originated as a direct response to the lack of public spaces and infrastructures for recreation and socializing in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Their projects encourage the use of public spaces through playful elements and unusual occurrences, and are developed through their collaboration with other artists, collectives and people in general.

Living with Poetry is co-curated by Roxana Fabius, Patricia M. Hernandez, and Natalia Zuluaga.