Maya C. Popa — They Are Building a Hospital

So much of what was once deemed impossible was found — during Covid — to be possible. Here, a poet watches a tent, a huge temporary hospital, be raised up on the green of Central Park, a place she’d previously walked her dog.

Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound Is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), which was a recipient of the North American Book Prize and a runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She is also the author of two chapbooks, both from the Diagram Chapbook series: You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave (New Michigan Press, 2018) and The Bees Have Been Canceled (New Michigan Press, 2017). She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at New York University. She is Director of Creative Writing at the Nightingale-Bamford school, where she oversees visiting writers, workshops, and readings. She holds degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College, and is currently pursuing her PhD on the role of wonder in poetry at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Maya C. Popa’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.