Author of poem "No Free Will in Tomatoes"
by Neil W. McCabe
The Cambridge Arts Council announced Nov. 13 Peter Payack will be the city's first Poet Populist, as elected by city residents to represent poetry for the City of Cambridge, working with both the council and the public library to create programs and events that will engage the City in poetry.
“I am truly thrilled to be elected as Cambridge’s first Poet Populist! I have long seen myself as a populous, a community activist, who is also a poet,” said Peter Payack, a longtime city resident and a assistant professor at Berklee College of Music, University of Massachusetts at Lowell and UMASS Online.
Peter Payack
“I would like to change people’s traditional perceptions of poetry by bringing it out of books and libraries, and make it accessible to all people in fun, interesting, and innovative ways," he said.
Payack was one of the eight finalists nominated by the public and whose qualifications were reviewed by the Poet Populist Advisory Committee. The election followed a public reading by the nominees on Nov. 1. In the week following the reading, nearly 1,000 residents of Cambridge cast ballots for the Poet Populist, said Mara Littman, the council's spokeswoman.
[Lo Galluccio, the paper's poetry editor, served on the advisory board.]
“I am very excited about the energy and enthusiasm that Peter will bring to this position,” said Councillor Brian Murphy, who launched Cambridge’s Poet Populist program, modeling it on Seattle’s initiative. “Cambridge residents showed that this city loves poetry. For our first year out with this program, we were amazed by the number of residents, nearly 1,000, who showed their support for their favorite poets.”
The Cambridge Poet Populist is an informal office for a local poet, chosen by the people to represent poetry for the City of Cambridge, she said.
In 1976, he founded Phone-A-Poem which stills run with support from Emerson College. His poem, "No Free Will in Tomatoes," was sandblasted into the floor of the Davis Square T station as part of the award-winning Arts on the Line art-in-transit project. Peter won the 1980 Rhysling Award for Best Poem in Science Fiction Poetry, she said.
He has also been published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction and his work was anthologized Knowing & Writing, New Perspectives on Classical Questions; Astronomy, from the Earth to the Universe; The Poets’ Encyclopedia; The Paris Review Anthology; The Alchemy of Stars; and Burning With a Vision. More recently, he has created Star Poems, which are poems written on an illuminated message board on the underside of a plane, she said.
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