BY BENJAMIN MANDILE
A Queens collaborative audio project has launched a website dedicated to giving an audio tour of the borough to showcase the “beauty and resilience” of Queens.
Queensbound, a poetry project started in 2018, opened its website for National Poetry Month, which features 33 poems of the 2020 and the 2018 installments. The project collects poems about the borough with 13 Queens-neighborhoods included – from Long Island City to Jamaica.
The goal of the project is to have a poem about each neighborhood with about 120 stops in total. The recordings are embedded at station stops on the Queens subway map.
The project encourages “close listening” and is intended to shut down the intimidation that often comes with poetry readings.
The project launched in November of 2018 and kicked off with a celebration to publicize itself. Contributors “took over” the first car of a Queens-bound 7 train at its first stop at Vernon-Jackson before getting off at Mets-Willets Point to gather at the Queens Museum for a reception.
The recordings were recorded by Peabody award-winning audio producer and editor Ann Heppermann in her home studio in Jackson Heights. The project features work from both “emerging” and “esteemed” poets with 16 poets contributing.
The site was created by website developer Lexi Namer and was designed by Kyle Richard.
The 2020 installment gained funding from an Arts Access Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts and is also supported by Poets and Writers. It also received fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas.
For more information, visit www.queensbound.com.
