Photo by Neidy Gutierrez | SOC Images.
Last week Union City held a street sign unveiling, which honors poet and trailblazer Janine Pommy Vega.
Vega, who was born in Jersey City and grew up in Union City, was a poet, teacher and world traveler.
Union City Commissioners Wendy Grullon and Celin Valdivia, residents, poets, friends and family of Vega gathered for the unveiling of “Janine Vega Way” on the corner of 47th Street and Palisade Avenue, where her family’s house once stood, now replaced by the Ron Dario Swimming Complex.
Hoboken Historical Museum Poet in Residence Danny Shot and Washington Park Association Poet in Residence Yetvart S. Majian read poems written by Vega like “239 47th Street”, which was Vega’s old address, “The Tray” and “Wartime Kitchen” which sentiments can relate today more than 20 years later.
The poem reads:
No jokes for the children, everybody’s children
I do not forgive their slaughter
the oil the arms the gold piled high as this house
cannot buy their laughter, cannot bury their shrieks
in the night, I accuse the old white men drowned in greed
of their murder, I will bang every pot and pan
I own for a world free from their hands.
Vega used poetry as an essential act of activism and stood proudly against imperialist wars. She supported immigrant rights and taught poetry to migrant workers at GENESEO Migrant Center and helped share their poems about home, crossing borders and the joy and heartbreak of their journeys.
Vega helped translate their poems in the book, “Estamos Aquí: Poems by Migrant Farmworkers,” helping give a voice to Mexican and Central American migrant farmworkers.
She was also a teacher for over 25 years, teaching poetry at New York State correctional facilities and coordinating anthologies to “amplify the talent and voices of inmate poets.”
Vega was the third female author to be published by City Lights in the Pocket Poets Series with “Poems to Fernando” and was a part of the Beat Generation, which was a social and literary movement that promoted ideas of freedom, self-expression and challenged societal norms.
Wanting to preserve and uplift Vega’s trailblazing legacy, Shot, Majian and Vera Sirota, the Communications Associate at the Hoboken Historical Museum, petitioned to Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack and commissioners to pass a resolution for the street naming of “Janine Vega Way.”
“For too long, women creatives have not received their due, often overshadowed by their male peers. I’m proud that Janine is getting recognition for her immense contributions to poetry. She is a role model and inspiration to me,” stated Sirota in a statement. “From teaching poetry in prisons to traveling the world, Janine has essential lessons to impart to us all.”
“She opened doors so that we could walk through them. She has left us a blueprint for leading a life of creativity and activism.”
After the unveiling, a reception and poetry event was held at the Musto Cultural Center where friends and admirers of Vega’s poems shared and celebrated more of her life’s work.
Majin, who runs The Poetry Unfold, which has been in Union City for three years, also expressed how special it is “to have our poetry ancestry in Union City honored.”
“We see poets write their first poem and read them with shaky hands, then give their first features and add their voice to the conversation to the world and that’s what I think Janine would have really wanted,” Majin told Slice of Culture.
“Janine showed our own path from Union City, across the river into the world.
“It’s really wonderful that now if someone comes down 47th Street and Palisade and they get curious and look up that name on Wikipedia, they’ll find a feminist poet, they’ll find an anti-war poet who has so much to offer to the contemporary conversation.”
The full livestream of the unveiling of “Janine Vega Way,” which is the first street in Union City to be named after a poet, can be found here.
