‘PEN STREET’ anthology hits home
The city of Reading is the focus of a new poetry collection.
Cities have a pulse that knows no bounds.
They are not limited by imaginary lines drawn on maps, based on rivers and streams and mountains and developments — historical or residential.
They spill forth in the raised voices of many who combine to create a boundlessly living, breathing energy.
They are smiles and frowns and a million possibilities all swirling around.
And so it is with “Pen Street: City of Poems,” a new anthology, available to download for free at barrioalegria. com, that bursts with nearly 100 verses inspired by Reading, its people and its long and storied history.
From Hope Sullivan’s opener, “Dear City” — and damn, did i fall in love/ with a boy whose eyes shone
as bright as the Pagoda — to Anthony Orozco’s closer, “Boys Who Pop Wheelies on Bikes Without Breaks
Brakes” — catch us if you can/ if you dare — “Pen Street” evokes images that hit close to home.
Curated by Orozco, the former City Edition reporter
for the Reading Eagle, and funded by a grant from the Berks County Community Foundation and the Pennsylvania
Council on the Arts, “Pen Street” gives voice to people of all walks of life.
Or, as Orozco put it: “We had college professors, we had Berks County poet laureates, we had mechanics, we had people who don’t consider themselves poets. (We had) songwriters, people who used to live in Reading back when it was ‘old Reading,’ we had people who just moved here from Puerto Rico. We had the whole gamut of views, which is what we wanted.”
He strove to put everyone on equal footing. The poet laureate’s words held no more weight than the middle school student’s.
And as was the case when he worked on the City Edition, Orozco wasn’t intending to build up or tear down. He set out to let the people speak for themselves. He saw himself as the conduit for each individual’s truth as it pertains to Reading.
“It was all about being a microphone to tell the stories of the city,” he said. “That’s something that has stayed with me, even if I’m not at the Reading Eagle. I think it’s important to make the narrative more accessible, so it’s not just a certain group of people who have control over the narrative.”
What he discovered — now, as then — is that truth comes in many shades. It can be really rough and give you pause, or it can uplift you.
“Sometimes you go, ‘Damn, I didn’t know this was going on in Reading,’” he said, “and then other times you leave with a little pep in your step, like, ‘My god, Reading’s got a real future.’”
Orozco was struck by how some of the poets laid bare their very souls.
“They’ve cut open their chest,” he said, “and handed you their beating heart.”
“Pen Street” was born of a year’s worth of poetry workshops Orozco conducted starting in November 2018 at Barrio Alegria, a community development organization that uses art as a vehicle for empowerment. In his workshops, Orozco met everyone from gray-hairs to young, chain-wearing Latinos.
“You would see these disparate worlds of Spanish speakers and poet laureates coming together, and they would have a great time together,” he said. “These people who would not know each other, who probably have no other reason to communicate or opportunity to hang out, would share different tips and processes of exploring how to express themselves.”
But Orozco didn’t stop there. He also got the local poetry group Berks Bards involved, and reached out to teachers in the Reading School District to draw youth to the project.
Using email and social media, he put out a call for poems that were inspired by Reading, or by experiences that happened in Reading, or that somehow captured the essence of Reading.
More than 60 people responded.
That’s when the real work began for Orozco.
“I just had a menagerie, a kaleidoscope of poems,” he said.
Needing to organize them, he started noticing recurring themes, and so “Stories,” “Love,” “Tribes” and “Places” became the four sections within the anthology.
Next he sought to create a narrative. He wanted them to flow, one to the next.
“So these poems were ordered in a way that you can read them front to back, completely, and there would be some sort of journey, some sort of arc from the beginning to the end of the section,” he said.
For all his hard work, Orozco found himself at a loss a month ago when the coronavirus pandemic became the new reality, just as “Pen Street” was about to hit Penn Street and take over storefront windows on Reading’s main drag with poster-board poetry displays.
“This whole thing was really, really heavy on interpersonal interaction,” he said, “so on March 12, when we were still allowed to be close to one another, the plan was workshops, sharing. Then all of a sudden the world changed, and I was panicking, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, what are we going to do?
We have everything planned.’ ... It was just so crazy.”
Undeterred, Orozco decided to use funds from the grant to pay artists to conduct their workshops online, free of charge. The full schedule, along with videos of poets reciting their works, is posted on the Pen Street Facebook page.
He also recognized the silver lining: that the project now has a captive audience. Quarantined people everywhere are feeling isolated, and they’re desperate for art in all forms.
For proof, look no further than the Berks County Quarantine Open Mic Facebook Group, which has attracted more than 11,000 members in its one month of existence.
“I think this pandemic has really emphasized the importance of art,” Orozco said. “We didn’t know how important art was until you’re stuck at home and you can’t do anything. People are consuming tons or art: Netflix, music, maybe they’re painting or writing poems. So it was a great time to share this.”