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Frank Sherlock shuns shouting for people to ponder poetry as a self-involved pursuit, believing verse must cause communities to converse. The resident of the 1000 block of Morris Street yearns for citizens to perk up their pens and energize their ears and will spend the next two years championing compositions as the City of Philadelphia’s second poet laureate.
“I’m looking forward to engaging as many folks as possible in appreciating the art,” the 44-year-old said Friday at B2, 1500 E. Passyunk Ave., where he recently wrote his initial piece as the metropolis’ metrical maven, “Little Sensation (a Sochi Song).” “My focus will include stripping away notions that poetry is for a limited amount of people and am going to stress its inclusivity and collaborative elements.”
The East Passyunk Crossing occupant accepted his accolade during a Jan. 31 City Hall ceremony, succeeding Sonia Sanchez, another touter of the evocative exchange between bards and neighborhoods. Acknowledging the area as an irrepressible contributor to his artistic maturation, he contends that inspiration abounds for all eager individuals and that practitioners of his craft must understand that despite any insular intentions, their output must consider copious groups to resonate.
“We have to take poetry beyond the institution,” Sherlock, who will receive a $5,000 stipend during his tenure, said of estimations that all notable works come from stuffy scribes who publish in academic journals. “We’re all potential voices in the discussion of where poetry can go. If we’re aware of our possibilities, who’s to say what we can accomplish?”
Enthused about enthusing all ages, the wordsmith, who learned in September of the competition to find Sanchez’s successor, won the title via his community-centric body of work, with notification coming late last year. He will perform his duties with return trips to City Hall and appearances at the Free Library of Philadelphia and will go from the recipient of great news to the bearer of it by helping to select and mentor a youth poet laureate.
“I was kind of shocked when the call came through but really excited about having the opportunity,” Sherlock, who bested more than two dozen versifiers in earning admiration from the nine-member Poet Laureate Governing Committee, said. “I took a nap soon after and woke thinking ‘Did that really happen?’”
From the stupor of uncertainty to the consciousness of responsibility, the writer, also a 2013 Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Literature designee, envisions a fruitful stint bearing stanzas that will strengthen his staunch appreciation for Philadelphia as the City of Otherly Love. That term signifies his stance that the urban setting wants to welcome anyone who can promote uniformity even where seemingly deal-ending differences appear.
“The methods for information exchange have to change for real appreciation of our shared identity to occur,” Sherlock said. “I’m not looking to be a grand messenger, but I do want to convey that collaboration through poetry can give us comfort.”
An esteemed executioner of unifying sentiments, the Southwest Philly native came to poetry two decades ago with bare-bones knowledge of its heritage and no awareness of how it could compose his life’s journey. Catching a reading by poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whom he had deemed a “badass” for addressing oppression in Russia and Chile, at the University of Pennsylvania, he knew he must pursue poetry not just as a passion but as a device to devise self-awareness and camaraderie.
“I never felt as if I should keep it hidden,” he said of the belief that he could go from a fledgling thinker to a scrupulous scribe with an affinity for community. “I started to imagine the manifestations of poetry to see where I could fit in, and I discovered that no matter where you come from, you can be a powerful figure.”
Having honed a well-respected body of work that reinforces that thinking, Sherlock confessed that he did not initially believe his projects would approach the register of Walt Whitman, another bearded bard to whom one could compare his poems because of the authors’ shared sense of seeing the individual as an irreplaceable cog in society’s machine. Loving his spell as a local seer, he has immersed himself in various publishing endeavors, including issuing “Neighbor Ballads” for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program’s ’11 “Journeys South” brainchild. Other works, such as “The City Real & Imagined” and “Ready-to-Eat Individual,” validate the committee’s selection with their emphasis on unity and delving into the daily grind that often makes people feel distanced even from themselves.
“I’ve said it before and it bears repeating,” Sherlock, winner of the ’12 Equinox Chapbook Award for “Very Different Animals,” said. “The real poetry is all around us. Who’s going to give it life?”
He will continue to take up the task next month with the publication of “Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated” and will have his work translated into Spanish for an upcoming collection. Combining those accomplishments with his recent endowment, a planned trip to Argentina and Chile to promote his efforts and his “Write Your Block” project that should find him engaging South Philadelphians on discussing their neighborhoods, Sherlock has definitely morphed from one who initially considered poetry confusing to a man at the height of his perceptive powers.
“People often speak about escaping Philadelphia when they ‘make it,’” he said. “I’m into helping other people to develop their own idea of making it.”
Contact Managing Editor Joseph Myers at jmyers@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124.
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