March 23, 2010 | Hunter College, Newsmakers
Brooklynites, watch out. Poetry is on its way to your parks, street fairs, the public consciousness. So says Tina Chang, Brooklyn’s new poet laureate, who wants to put poetry center stage. “We might just have to confront them, the same way that Poetry in Motion does in the subway, so they’re actually surprised to be reading a poem,” Chang said of the public. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz named Chang, a Park Slope resident and Hunter College adjunct professor, to the post in February and already a few of her ideas are in the works, including Adopt-a-Poet Day for Ronald Edmonds Middle School and a collaborative arts project for the Brooklyn Book Festival. She discussed her job and why she feels poetry is for everyone: It’s “an embodiment of every kind of creative thought you’ve ever had. …. It questions your self-expression and your sense of self in the world.”
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