Coney Island is a New York City institution, best known to New Yorkers and tourists alike for its wide seaside boardwalk and nostalgic Wonder Wheel. This summer, local writers and their connections to the seaside neighborhood are being recognized in an annual installation — the Coney Island Poetry Map.
Installed in April (and up through the summer), The Coney Island Poetry Map consists of poems hung across the peninsula, tacked up near the locations they were written about.
“Our priority was to hold space for those who live and work in Coney Island first and foremost,” said Amanda Deutch, executive director of Parachute Literary Arts, the organization hosting the exhibit. “They’re an inside perspective. They’re poems that are … about the experiences of those who live and work here.”
Deutch grew up in New York City, a third generation Coney Islander — her mother and grandparents from the coastal nabe, which she affectionally calls “the motherland.” In 2009, she founded Parachute Literally Arts, wanting to “showcase the voices of people who live and work in Coney Island, and amplify those voices” through various forms of literature, especially being a “neighborhood of historically underrepresented populations.”
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Links:
Brooklyn Paper | Amanda Deutch | Parachute Literary Arts
