
Seven poems that make you stop and appreciate Chicago
These poems rhapsodize about everyday moments of city life — and show the deep well of talent on the literary scene. You can hear each read aloud by the poet who created it.

Seven poems that make you stop and appreciate Chicago
These poems rhapsodize about everyday moments of city life — and show the deep well of talent on the literary scene. You can hear each read aloud by the poet who created it.
By Lauren FrostThe poetry anthology Wherever I’m At, published this year, features more than 100 writers with connections to Chicago. Touted as a definitive collection of living local poets, its pages contain odes to Humboldt Park, the Quincy “L” station, and the Smart Bar dance floor.
WBEZ invited seven poets to our studios to read their work from the anthology. Click any player to listen to the poems below. Since poetry is always evolving, some poems read aloud here may differ slightly from the printed versions in Wherever I’m At.
Johanny Vázquez Paz “A World of Our Own: to the people of Humboldt Park”

Bob Chicoine “The Quincy Stop”


avery r. young “base(d) on a prompt from Phillip B. Williams: a poem written in de voice of a parent Bunk 1973-1994”
avery r. young is a co-director of the Floating Museum arts collective. His writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets, In the Company of Black, Poetry magazine and Teaching Black.
Naoko Fujimoto “Lake Michigan”

Raúl Niño “February on Eighteenth Street”


Rachel DeWoskin “chance, chicago”
Rachel DeWoskin is an associate professor at the University of Chicago. She wrote the novels Banshee, Someday We Will Fly, Blind, Big Girl Small and Repeat After Me; the poetry collection Two Menus; and the memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing.

Marvin Tate “Memories of a Dance Floor: The Smart Bar 1987”
Marvin Tate is a multidisciplinary artist who has performed with Angel Bat Dawid, Circuit Des Yeux, Mike Reed’s Separatist Party, Theaster Gates’ Black Monks, Tim Kinsella and members of the jazz experimentalists the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.