Freshkills Park to Celebrate National Poetry Month with 6th Annual Haiku Contest in April

Freshkills Park celebrates National Poetry Month this April with our sixth annual Haiku Contest. NYC Parks wants to hear impressions, experiences, thoughts and ideas of what Freshkills Park is and will be - in haiku form! A haiku is a type of poem written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables for a total of 17 syllables.

Entrants should email their submissions, along with name and age, to freshkillspark@parks.nyc.gov by 5 p.m. on Monday, April 28. Prizes will be awarded to the top youth winner as well as the top three adult winners. Entrants under 18, should indicate that they are submitting as a youth entrant.

Freshkills Park, a 2,200-acre site on Staten Island, has begun the transition from closed landfill to world-class park. Each area within the park will have a distinct character and will incorporate richly diverse habitats for wildlife, birds and plant communities, as well as provide extraordinary natural settings for recreation including horseback riding, nature trails and large-scale public art and cultural programming. Freshkills Park has celebrated development milestones in the last couple of years with the opening of Schmul Park in 2012, and Owl Hollow Fields in 2013. Construction has begun on the New Springville Greenway which is slated to open in 2015 as a 3.2-mile paved biking and walking path along the full length of Freshkills Park. There are opportunities for all to rediscover the site and witness its transformation into a park through public programs and our annual 'Sneak Peak' festival in September. To learn more about Freshkills Park and to stay up to date on the latest news, visit NYC Parks' website at nyc.gov/parks and search "Freshkills Park."