We hope that your walk through the park has inspired your creativity. Send Poem Quest a poem of your own! You can write about your experience of the park, a spot in it that caught your attention, or a story about yourself and what brings you here. We would love to see it.

Upload your poem or type it into the editor.

About

Take a walk through Newark’s Riverfront Park searching for poems that tell the stories of the people who visit it! Listen to the poems by following the trail of photographs by photojournalist Ed Kashi that provide clues for discovering the poetry in and of Riverfront Park. 

Poetry has long been a means of personal storytelling; PoemQuest tells the story of Riverfront Park through the voices of local poets commissioned by Newest Americans to interview visitors and share their stories through poetry. The poets asked questions designed to understand how visitors are connected to the park and to New Jersey—Where did your family come from before settling in New Jersey? What brought you here? What brings you to this park? 

PoemQuest connects art to history through an interactive game that peoples the park with poetry. Once you play the game we encourage you to share your own poem about the journey that led you to Newark and your connection to Riverfront Park. Submit your poem

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Dania Rohani

Panacea Read Poem

Dania Rohani

Panacea

In the quarry, the shovel exhumes
As metal meets the contact of rocks
Clunks and echoes
A highlighter in the rain
Hands never seeing light of day,
The river in your hands,
Murky, oxidized, mud
Surface area of dirt,
No sight of skin
To correct a mistake,
Shovels and tanks
Sewers and pipelines
Calibrated, stable
For children to play
To watch their grandchildren running
Across a filed