Establishing official, paid Poet Laureate positions for each borough to create community-specific work and promote poetry as a public art.
The Poet Laureate of Every Borough Program
New York City has a Poet Laureate, but Mamdani believes each borough deserves its own voice. He creates five official, salaried Poet Laureate positionsfor the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Selected through a public process, each laureate serves a two-year term with a mandate to create new work inspired by their borough, lead community workshops, give public readings in libraries and parks, and act as an ambassador for the literary arts. Their poems would be displayed on transit, published in local newspapers, and woven into borough-specific events.
This hyper-localizes poetry, celebrates the unique identity of each borough, and brings the art form directly to people in their daily lives. Poetry is the peoples artcompact, powerful, and accessible, Mamdani says. By giving each borough its own laureate, we root the poetic voice in the specific soil of our neighborhoods, capturing the rhythm, struggle, and beauty of life in The Bronx, or Queens, or Staten Island in real time.
