Tourists as Poets at 9/11 Tribute Center
By Erin Carlyle
POSTED JANUARY 1, 2008
Some 340,000 sightseers to Ground Zero have toured the exhibits of the nearby Tribute WTC Visitor Center since it opened in September, 2006, each of them hoping for a deeper understanding of the events of Sept. 11.
Last month, on a Sunday afternoon, a few of those visitors found themselves seated around a table, a floor below the buzzing crowds of the main gallery, silently bringing their own meaning to the tragedy, through poetry.
Arriving in shifts over a couple of hours that afternoon, the visitors—from England, Scotland, Holland and California as well as New York—joined widely published poet Angelo Verga, 62, for a workshop meant to help them connect memories and feelings to their visit near the site.
“You’re not asking for the part of the brain that’s super rational,” said Verga, a Downtown resident who has himself written on the tragedy. “It’s the part of the brain that’s triggered by emotion and metaphor.”
For Gemma Cooke, 22, of Nottingham, England, writing about Sept. 11 triggered painful memories of her grandfather’s death and empathy for the families of those who died in the attacks. As Cooke read her poem out loud, her eyes filled with tears as her sister Jane, 20, reached over to hug and comfort her.
“Many words come to mind,” Gemma Cooke wrote. “Bravery, fear, anger, disbelief, sadness, proud and many more. I wish there was more we could do. God bless.”
Verga hasl combined selections from the 16 poems into one large poem, now posted on the visitor center’s Web site (www.tributenyc.org) and in the gallery.
Verga and Meriam Lobel, curator of exhibits and programs, conceived of the workshop as a way to help people give a gift that others could share during the holidays.
Although many people feel connected to the tragedy, Verga said, they are often reluctant to write about it. One of them was Susannah Nevison, 23, a graduate student in poetry at Columbia University.
“Writing about Sept. 11 is difficult because you almost feel like it’s not something you can touch,” Nevison said. “It doesn’t really feel like your story to tell.”
Still, she made the attempt, which she titled, “Effort at Speech.”
so that it isn’t about
the body anymore, but
space between your
cupped palms, your
refusal and grief –
because we cannot
assign a value to
desolation here, better
to believe in the
tangible curve of
steel, the sift of
fingers through sand –
remember, how he would
fondle a button
Fiona Harfield, 41, of Hampshire, England, has visited the site three times since the towers fell. Her poem described the changes she’s seen. “The silence is peaceful (not deathly), it is no longer somber,” Harfield wrote.
“It made us feel better doing that,” Harfield said later. “I feel like I’m really part of it. I feel like I’ve done my bit to show support.”
That’s important in a world that sometimes doesn’t want to hear about grief and emotion, noted Verga. “If you were just sitting around at home and wanted to talk about 9/11 for an hour everyone would leave the room,” he said. “People are looking for an outlet.”
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