A Poetry Event Focused on Emerging Student Writers

Poetry Night at The Barnacle features selected poetry written and read by students from Miami-Dade high schools. Student poems submitted will also be posted throughout the park.  First-, second- and third-place bookstore gift-card prizes donated by Books & Books Literary Foundation will be awarded, as well as beautiful award plaques donated by Awards TrophyWorld. And Milam’s is donating delicious food platters of which all attendees may partake after the readings. 

“Poetry Night at The Barnacle is an important step forward in the promotion of young literary talent in South Florida. This burgeoning metropolis has yet to produce a major literary publication or press. And when it does, the poetry and literary scene in greater Miami will likely look back at Poetry Night as a triggering point.”

    ---Ricardo Pau-Llosa, featured guest poet at 2024 Poetry Night; author of Cuba, 100th title in Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series and nominee for The Pulitzer Prize

“Events like Poetry Night connect our community through the power of words. I encourage everyone to attend and take part in this fantastic lineup of celebrated and emerging poets alike.”

     ---Daniella Levine Cava, Miami-Dade County Mayor

Miami-Dade high schools that plan to participate in Poetry Night include Carrollton Upper School, Christopher Columbus High, Coral Gables Senior High, Coral Reef High, Hebrew Academy (RASG), Miami Coral Park Senior High, Miami Palmetto Senior High, Miami Senior High, Palmer Trinity Upper School, Ransom Everglades Upper School, and Riviera Preparatory School.

Richard Blanco and Denise Duhamel to Be Featured Readers

Richard Blanco, fifth inaugural poet of the United States and Inaugural Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County, has received numerous honors for his writings and performances, including the National Humanities Medal, Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellowship, a Florida Artist Fellowship, and a Bread Loaf Fellowship, as well as honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College, and the University of Rhode Island. He is the first-ever education ambassador for the Academy of American Poets. His collections of poetry include Homeland of My Body: New & Selected Poems (2023), City of a Hundred Fires (1998), which won the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005), winner of the PEN/American Beyond Margins Award, Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012), winner of the Thom Gunn Award, the Maine Literary Award, and the Paterson Prize, One Today (2013), How to Love a Country (2019), and Boston Strong (2013), which he performed at the TD Boston Garden Benefit Concert and at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park after the Boston Marathon bombings. Blanco was raised in Miami and earned his MFA in creative writing from FIU. He has taught at Georgetown University, American University, Writer’s Center, Central Connecticut State University, and Wesleyan University.

Denise Duhamel was awarded Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts fellowships (2014 and 2013) and the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize. She has had her work included in several volumes of Best American Poetry, and was the guest editor of Best American Poetry 2013. She has been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Bill Moyers’s PBS poetry special Fooling with Words. Duhamel has published numerous collections of poetry, including Pink Lady (2025), In Which (2024), Second Story (2021), Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (2021), Scald (2017), Blowout (2013), which was a finalist for a National Books Critics Circle Award, Ka-Ching! (2009), Two and Two (2005), The Star-Spangled Banner (1999) and Kinky (1997).  Duhamel earned her BFA at Emerson College and an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College.  A Distinguished University professor at FIU, she lives in South Florida.