Poetry took center stage on Episode 9 of The Miami Book Hub, where I had the pleasure of welcoming Nicole Tallman, Miami-Dade County’s newly appointed Poet Laureate.
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Nicole, a longtime Miami-Dade County colleague and passionate advocate for the literary arts, was appointed in April as the County’s third Poet Laureate. The program, she explained, was created by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava “to help recognize poetry in Miami-Dade County,” and to serve as “a sort of ambassador…for the literary arts and poetry.”
For Nicole, the role is about accessibility. “I’ve made it a point to try to find ways to make poetry more accessible to people,” she said. That mission is already taking shape through projects such as Songs for America, created in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, and Miami Moves Me, which brings poems onto public transit screens.
I especially appreciated Miami Moves Me because it bridges two of my own worlds: transportation and writing. I relayed how I enjoy seeing riders look up from their personal screens to engage with the poems. “Commuting can be stressful,” I noted, and poetry can offer a moment of reflection, beauty and connection in an otherwise ordinary trip.
Our conversation also explored a deceptively simple question: What makes a poem a poem? Nicole resisted a rigid definition, but offered a thoughtful one. “To me, it’s a container of expression,” she said. “For me, it has a degree of music to it.” While rhyme has fallen somewhat out of fashion in contemporary poetry, Nicole emphasized that musicality remains essential, whether through cadence, repetition, slant rhyme, internal rhyme or other craft tools.
That lifelong relationship with language began early. “I don’t remember not writing poetry,” Nicole said. “My mother read poetry to me from a very, very young age.” She added that poetry and music have always lived closely together in her imagination: “I wake up with poetry in my head.”
We also discussed Nicole’s work as a collaborator across art forms and institutions. She has written poems in response to visual art for Miami City Ballet and is now developing a signature project at the intersection of poetry and music. Her hope is to pair local poets with musicians, allowing musicians to respond to recorded readings of poems and create new works that may be shared in public spaces or performed live. “I believe in paying poets and artists for their work,” she said.
The episode also offered insight into the world of poetry publishing. Nicole described her new experimental flip chapbook, Dolce Vita / Let There Be a Little Light, published by Bottlecap Press. One side contains lyrical, diary-like 15-line poems; the other explores more surreal, rhyming poems inspired by colors of light. She read selections from both, to my great delight.
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In a fun and heartfelt closing moment, I read an original ode I had written for Nicole, celebrating her appointment and her work on behalf of Miami’s literary community. It read, in part:
“A colleague by day, a poet by soul, you remind us that words can make fractured things whole.
That rhythm and rhyme aren’t just lines on a page; they’re the pulse of a people, the voice of an age. So here’s to your pen, your passion, your flame; to the beauty you build in community’s name. May your poems keep rising, like dawn on the sea, to lift up our beloved Miami.”
It is a testament to Nicole’s down-to-earth nature that she accepted my amateur, “Dr. Seuss-ish” poem with grace and appreciation. It is no wonder, then, that she has been called a “poet of the people.”
Through her appointment, public projects and creative partnerships, Nicole is helping remind residents that poetry is not confined to bookshelves or classrooms. It can live on trains, in public spaces, in music, in memory and in the everyday rhythm of the city itself; even in the rhymes of a would-be Dr. Seuss.
You can learn more about Nicole Tallman and Miami-Dade County’s poetry initiatives at NicoleTallman.com and miamidade.gov/poetry.
To view this full interview and other episodes of The Miami Book Hub visit my YouTube channel at YouTube.com/@J.AdrianBetancourt.
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