A flash of inspiration; a divine moment of creative rapture. This is what every writer dreams of.
The writing process has been a favorite muse of writers since Sumerians first chiseled language into stone. Though the ease of transcription has improved with technological advancements, for some, the task of putting words on a page is no simpler now than it was six millennia ago. As Charles Peguy said: “A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”
For some (like me), the process of writing can be a laborious task, spiraling into a cycle of obsession and, “How do I say what I mean?” For others, like the flash-poets at Miami Poetry Collective, writing is as simple as laying hands on an antique typewriter.
Founded, as the story goes, at a plastic table in front of Zeke’s Roadhouse Bar in the winter of 2008, Miami Poetry Collective has written themselves instantly into the tome of creative purists, straddling the Dadas and Beats as they put down uninhibited, unedited words on command at their Poem Depots.
Since last spring, they’ve set up their Remingtons and Olivettis on sidewalks and parking lots all over Miami, charging $2 for a clicked-out poem on your topic of choice. Want a villanelle about Fluffy the Cat? Clickety-click. A sonnet to your backyard banana tree? Ka-ching!
MPC has grown quickly since its inception, moving, on occasion, out of city ways and inside the walls of the Miami Art Museum, the Garden Lounge, the Vagabond, and the Epic Hotel, just to name a few. And this weekend, they’re leaving Miami for the very first time, to park their Smith Coronas at two of St. Pete’s finest fixtures:
