News Release

Everglades National Park hosts U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón for "You Are Here: Poetry in Parks Project"

Poet Laureate Ada Limón joins Library of Congress and National Park Service representatives in unveiling the first of the poetry installations for her signature project, "You Are Here: Poetry in Parks," at Cape Cod National Seashore, June 14, 2024

Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

News Release Date: September 19, 2024

Contact: Allyson Gantt, 786-610-8023

EDIT 10/4/2024 - This event is postponed due to weather until early 2025. We will repost once the date is confirmed. 

MIAMI, Fla. – On Oct. 8, Everglades National Park will host the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to celebrate the intersection of poetry and nature with a virtual event for students and a public event to unveil a poetry installation—a picnic table inscribed with the poem “Ecology” by June Jordan.  

Everglades is one of seven national parks selected to be part of Limón’s signature project “You are Here: Poetry in Parks.” The initiative is a partnership between the National Park Service (NPS), Library of Congress, and the Poetry Society of America that features installations of site-specific poetry installations in the parks. In each park, a picnic table, transformed into a work of public art, features a historic American poem that relates to the park in a meaningful way. 

“I want to champion the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world,” said Limón.  “Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence, and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature—of communing with the natural world through breath and presence.” 

Everglades National Park is the sixth stop of Limón’s "You Are Here: Poetry in Parks" tour.  She has already visited Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, Mount Rainier National Park in Washington, Redwood National and State Parks in California, Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. The final stop on her tour will be Saguaro National Park in Arizona. 

The project includes an invitation for public participation. The NPS and Limón hope people of all ages—poets and non-poets—will feel moved to write their own responses to the You Are Here prompt of “What would you write in response to the landscape around you?” People have the option to share their responses on social media using the hashtag #YouAreHerePoetry. 

“We are so pleased to be a part of Ms. Limón’s Poetry in Parks project,” said Sabrina Diaz, interim superintendent for Everglades and Dry Tortugas national parks. “Through the park’s Artist in Residence in Everglades program and other opportunities, we have hosted poets and other artists over the years to explore that special connection between art and nature.”  

Beginning at 3 p.m., the free, public event will be held outside the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center at the Homestead entrance. Limón will give a poetry reading and describe the selection of the poem, followed by a panel discussion with local representatives from community organization O, Miami and park partner Artists in Residence in Everglades, Inc. The ceremony will end with an unveiling of the picnic table which will reside in the parking area of the visitor center to inspire park visitors. A book signing will follow hosted by the Florida National Parks Association, the park’s non-profit partner. 

Limón will also join a park ranger in the morning for a virtual broadcast from the Everglades to classrooms across the country. Teachers may register for the virtual reading and introduction to the Everglades by emailing the park’s education program at e-mail us.  

Limón was appointed as the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress on July 12, 2022, and was reappointed for a historic two-year second term on April 24, 2023. Limón’s second term will conclude in April 2025.