April 24, 2025 • 13 mins
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor presents her State of the City address Monday (28th). St. Leo University professor Gianna Russo, who has formerly served as the city's official Wordsmith, will read a poem she composed for the occasion. She'll preview the themes in this year's message.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Tampa Mayor Jane
Caster is delivering her annual State of the City address Monday,
April twenty eighth. Her presentation includes a poem written by
Saint Leo University Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing,
Gianna Russo. Russo's Tampa roots are deep, and she has
previously served as the city's wordsmith, and we'll talk to
(00:20):
her about what that position means. Let's start with that.
Tell me what the designation of a wordsmith is in
the city of Tampa and how you fulfilled your duties
in that regard.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Okay, thank you well. A wordsmith, in my definition, is
someone who makes things out of words, just like a
blacksmith with someone who made horseshoes, and a copper smith
makes things out of copper. So that's how I have
always interpreted the title a little bit different than a
(00:52):
poet laureate who is specifically working in poetry. This I
think the wordsmith is a little bit more of an
inclusive title because you could work in all genres poetry
or fiction or creative nonfiction or even academic writings. So
I feel like it was a really great umbrella term,
(01:12):
and I was appointed by the mayor in twenty twenty
and that was a two year term and then we
sort of set it aside, but I've continued to do
work specifically for the mayor over these last couple of years.
So mostly what I did during that two year period
(01:32):
is I worked with people in the community and groups
in the community to create things out of words, whether
it be stories or poems or reminiscences for example. Remember that,
of course, in twenty twenty, everybody remembers we were in
the middle of the pandemic, and so one of my
very first community projects was called Haiku from Home, and
(01:56):
we opened up an online portal that would allow any
one who wanted to to submit a haiku about the
pandemic and specifically about being at home, because I think
those were the early days when we were sort of
still you know, isolated and cloistered a little bit. So
we got a lot of haiku, and the city did
(02:16):
publish those. They're still available on the website of the
city Haiku from Home, and it was great to hear
from people from all walks of life and students. We
even got some from some elementary school students, but we
got people from all walks of life and all corners
of the city, and I felt like that was a
really wonderful and inclusive project to do to kind of
(02:40):
kick off my tenure. So that was one of the
key ones. One of the last ones that I did
was also wonderful and inclusive, and this was a project
where we ended up calling it the Poetry Mailbox. So
there is an artist who created a three dimensional sculpture,
(03:02):
artistic sculpture of a lack of a better word. It's
sort of like a mailbox that you would see at
the post office, one of those great, big, sort of
boxy things. But this was done very artistically and very creatively,
and it has it's painted, but it also has mosaic
(03:27):
on it. Now, what we did is we solicited poems
in particular about Tampa, homages to Tampa, poems that would
pay tribute or honor the city. And once we got
all of those poems, I went through them and selected
key lines that I thought were really, you know, really iconic,
(03:49):
and some of those lines ended up being painted on
this large traveling poetry mail box. So that was one
of the very final projects that we did, and the
Poetry mail has ended up traveling around the city to
different community centers so that people could come and see it.
And it also has a little real sort of mailbox
(04:12):
attached to it where people could write a poem on
the spot and put it into that little mailbox. So
I thought that was just great.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, no, it brings up and this may seem unrelated,
but I remember some time back interviewing someone from the
food services section in the Hillsboro County School District. They
had just put together a day where all of their
food was sourced from Florida for the students in the
(04:42):
school district, and it got me to thinking about how
a how you teach a food culture, and you know
about Tampa zone food culture ranging from you know, the
high end of the final rest of the Columbias and
the ulelees and the burned steakhouses, all the way down
(05:05):
to the street food and down to things like the
Cuban sandwich. And I got I'm seeing a connection here
between food culture and word culture. And it sounds like
a lot of what you did then as wordsmith and
what you continue to do is kind of work on
creating that word culture for the city of Tampa. And
(05:25):
that being the case, what Uh, what, what do you
How do you think that a community creates a culture
in words and poetry and prose in in how do
you think that? How do you think that that process happens?
And is this something that can be influenced and nurtured?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Wow, what a great question. I'll answer the first part first.
I absolutely think it can be influenced. I think it
can be taught, and I think it can be nurtured.
If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have been an
educate for forty two years. So this is at the
core of my being in terms of this culture. Is
(06:08):
such an interesting way to think about it. If we
think about Tampa, we each of course have our own
little sort of personal cultures that are within our families,
and they're also within our friends circles and maybe our
professional circles too. But as a city, we do share
some things, and those will come to mind very easily
(06:30):
for people. We share our athletic teams, we share our art.
We share the ziggorot that is on top of the
building downtown that gets lighted different lights, you know, and
for every occasion we share the minarets, we share the
river walks. So I think that the way too, or
the way that I have gone about trying to help
(06:52):
people access that shared culture which they carry within them.
They may not be aware of it, but they do
carry it within them. The way that I feel that
I help is getting people to recognize that they have
that and that they can draw on it. So just
like when you're talking about food, you know, all of
us know what ice cream tastes like. We might feel
(07:15):
differently about it, but we all pretty much know what it.
Most of us know what it tastes like, and if
you're asked to describe it, you can come up with something.
And so it's that same sort of thing when you're
writing about the city, even if you've never been there,
you've heard about the river walk, and you can come
up with something. And that's what we work with, that
(07:37):
little kernel of knowledge and experience, and then hopefully I
can also lead people to understanding how to access inspiration
because I truly, I truly do believe that inspiration can
come down, you know, from the heavens and just strike
(07:58):
you like lightning. But more importantly, I believe that inspiration
can be accessed because I think we all have it
in us and we don't have to wait for that
exterior moment for it to come to us. But most
people don't know how to get to it. You know.
It's common for us to say, well, kids know how
(08:18):
to play, kids know how to make up songs and poems,
kids know how to imagine, and a lot of times
we lose this as we grow up. So part of
my goal and part of my you know, sort of
meaning in life, I guess, if you will, as a
poet and a wordsmith, is to help people sort of
(08:40):
plug back into that because we all have it.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
We're speaking with John Russol, Associate Professor of English and
Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, and of course you're
going to be delivering a poem at the State of
the City address, and we don't want to spill the
beans early before that happens, but could you tell us,
could you share with us some of the themes that
(09:03):
you plan to incorporate into that poem.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Absolutely, when the Mayor's office contacted me, they gave me
the themes that she's going to be focusing on, and the
themes are generally resilience, the resilience of our city and
of our people. Rebounding from challenges and specifically the hurricane
(09:26):
season and rising up from those challenges. So those are
the those are the areas that I really wanted to address,
and I think I I think I did hit on them.
Part of the reason I think that this was a
good good is not the best word, but it was
a good project for me is because my family was
(09:50):
directly directly impacted by the hurricanes. Our homes were impacted.
My son's home was flooded, so I have a lot
of and then we had so many friends who, unfortunately
some of them lost everything. But I was able again
to draw and personal experience and empathy and compassion and observation,
(10:14):
all those things and the idea of rebounding and put
that into a poem. So I hope that the mayor
and everyone else at the city will think that I
did an okay job with that.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Now, before we started our conversation here, you mentioned that
you actually also have a part of a poem from
that's dedicated I believe. Is it dedicated to Seminole Heights?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well, I have, I have three books, and my second
book is called One House Down. I'll show Well, I
know we're on radio, but for you to see. Here's
a picture of it. The poems in that book are
all poems about being, you know, growing up in Tampa.
I'm a native. I've never lived anywhere else, and I've
(11:02):
lived the last thirty years in Seminal Heights, and so
the poems in the book have a very realistic, loving,
but realistic look at Seminal Heights in the South. So yeah,
I have I have plenty of poems in there. The
mayor tells me that she has read that book and
(11:23):
that it spoke to her. She felt that I really
kind of nailed the neighborhood. So I hope that's right.
I believe her.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Well, I have no doubt on that score. I'm sure,
not even having seen it. But if you want, if
you want to share a portion of one of those
poems or one of your excerpts with us, feel free
to do so.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Sure I would like to do that. I'm going to
choose a very very short poem called Memory and Green,
and this is a poem about growing up, but it's
also a poem about being very aware of all the
different shades of green in the world. And it starts
and ends with the green flash, which people who have
(12:07):
grown up in Florida, have heard about the green flash,
that mythical flash that you're supposed to see at sunset
over the golf. So it starts and ends with that,
but it's really just a list of things in green
when I'm growing up, So it's called memory and green
flash at sunset. I'm never seen over the golf. Rain
(12:28):
trudging up from the Atlantic high grass in the yards
on Ferris Drive, and green light of kickball games just
before dusk, voice of the whipper wheel. The Bob White
putred belly of a dead frog in the road, and
the kid we blindfolded and made step in it. We
were that ugly duck weed smothering the old ditch live
(12:51):
oak with the sap green leaves where we swayed above
the bad neighbor's yard, made up stories and practice kissing
green gold canes of the cracker roses lost to the yardman,
the lawn boy, the dark green whip of night blooming
serious that stuck itself to the magnolia tree and flowered
(13:11):
like New Year's Eve, vertigree wings of the dragonflies, milk
green of the evening moths. Rain like a woodblock print,
horizontal and ragged, hurricane colors and the gray green of
the eye flash at sunset like the luck I Never spied.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And that's Professor Gianarusso with Saint Leo University English and
Creative Writing, and she's going to be delivering a poem
about Tampa for the State of the City address on Monday,
April twenty eighth. Then that address is supposed to happen
at eleven o'clock Monday morning. Professor Russo, Jean Russo, thank
you very much for joining us here and best of success.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much
for including me.
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Tampa Mayor Jane
Caster is delivering her annual State of the City address Monday,
April twenty eighth. Her presentation includes a poem written by
Saint Leo University Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing,
Gianna Russo. Russo's Tampa roots are deep, and she has
previously served as the city's wordsmith, and we'll talk to
(00:20):
her about what that position means. Let's start with that.
Tell me what the designation of a wordsmith is in
the city of Tampa and how you fulfilled your duties
in that regard.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Okay, thank you well. A wordsmith, in my definition, is
someone who makes things out of words, just like a
blacksmith with someone who made horseshoes, and a copper smith
makes things out of copper. So that's how I have
always interpreted the title a little bit different than a
(00:52):
poet laureate who is specifically working in poetry. This I
think the wordsmith is a little bit more of an
inclusive title because you could work in all genres poetry
or fiction or creative nonfiction or even academic writings. So
I feel like it was a really great umbrella term,
(01:12):
and I was appointed by the mayor in twenty twenty
and that was a two year term and then we
sort of set it aside, but I've continued to do
work specifically for the mayor over these last couple of years.
So mostly what I did during that two year period
(01:32):
is I worked with people in the community and groups
in the community to create things out of words, whether
it be stories or poems or reminiscences for example. Remember that,
of course, in twenty twenty, everybody remembers we were in
the middle of the pandemic, and so one of my
very first community projects was called Haiku from Home, and
(01:56):
we opened up an online portal that would allow any
one who wanted to to submit a haiku about the
pandemic and specifically about being at home, because I think
those were the early days when we were sort of
still you know, isolated and cloistered a little bit. So
we got a lot of haiku, and the city did
(02:16):
publish those. They're still available on the website of the
city Haiku from Home, and it was great to hear
from people from all walks of life and students. We
even got some from some elementary school students, but we
got people from all walks of life and all corners
of the city, and I felt like that was a
really wonderful and inclusive project to do to kind of
(02:40):
kick off my tenure. So that was one of the
key ones. One of the last ones that I did
was also wonderful and inclusive, and this was a project
where we ended up calling it the Poetry Mailbox. So
there is an artist who created a three dimensional sculpture,
(03:02):
artistic sculpture of a lack of a better word. It's
sort of like a mailbox that you would see at
the post office, one of those great, big, sort of
boxy things. But this was done very artistically and very creatively,
and it has it's painted, but it also has mosaic
(03:27):
on it. Now, what we did is we solicited poems
in particular about Tampa, homages to Tampa, poems that would
pay tribute or honor the city. And once we got
all of those poems, I went through them and selected
key lines that I thought were really, you know, really iconic,
(03:49):
and some of those lines ended up being painted on
this large traveling poetry mail box. So that was one
of the very final projects that we did, and the
Poetry mail has ended up traveling around the city to
different community centers so that people could come and see it.
And it also has a little real sort of mailbox
(04:12):
attached to it where people could write a poem on
the spot and put it into that little mailbox. So
I thought that was just great.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, no, it brings up and this may seem unrelated,
but I remember some time back interviewing someone from the
food services section in the Hillsboro County School District. They
had just put together a day where all of their
food was sourced from Florida for the students in the
(04:42):
school district, and it got me to thinking about how
a how you teach a food culture, and you know
about Tampa zone food culture ranging from you know, the
high end of the final rest of the Columbias and
the ulelees and the burned steakhouses, all the way down
(05:05):
to the street food and down to things like the
Cuban sandwich. And I got I'm seeing a connection here
between food culture and word culture. And it sounds like
a lot of what you did then as wordsmith and
what you continue to do is kind of work on
creating that word culture for the city of Tampa. And
(05:25):
that being the case, what Uh, what, what do you
How do you think that a community creates a culture
in words and poetry and prose in in how do
you think that? How do you think that that process happens?
And is this something that can be influenced and nurtured?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Wow, what a great question. I'll answer the first part first.
I absolutely think it can be influenced. I think it
can be taught, and I think it can be nurtured.
If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have been an
educate for forty two years. So this is at the
core of my being in terms of this culture. Is
(06:08):
such an interesting way to think about it. If we
think about Tampa, we each of course have our own
little sort of personal cultures that are within our families,
and they're also within our friends circles and maybe our
professional circles too. But as a city, we do share
some things, and those will come to mind very easily
(06:30):
for people. We share our athletic teams, we share our art.
We share the ziggorot that is on top of the
building downtown that gets lighted different lights, you know, and
for every occasion we share the minarets, we share the
river walks. So I think that the way too, or
the way that I have gone about trying to help
(06:52):
people access that shared culture which they carry within them.
They may not be aware of it, but they do
carry it within them. The way that I feel that
I help is getting people to recognize that they have
that and that they can draw on it. So just
like when you're talking about food, you know, all of
us know what ice cream tastes like. We might feel
(07:15):
differently about it, but we all pretty much know what it.
Most of us know what it tastes like, and if
you're asked to describe it, you can come up with something.
And so it's that same sort of thing when you're
writing about the city, even if you've never been there,
you've heard about the river walk, and you can come
up with something. And that's what we work with, that
(07:37):
little kernel of knowledge and experience, and then hopefully I
can also lead people to understanding how to access inspiration
because I truly, I truly do believe that inspiration can
come down, you know, from the heavens and just strike
(07:58):
you like lightning. But more importantly, I believe that inspiration
can be accessed because I think we all have it
in us and we don't have to wait for that
exterior moment for it to come to us. But most
people don't know how to get to it. You know.
It's common for us to say, well, kids know how
(08:18):
to play, kids know how to make up songs and poems,
kids know how to imagine, and a lot of times
we lose this as we grow up. So part of
my goal and part of my you know, sort of
meaning in life, I guess, if you will, as a
poet and a wordsmith, is to help people sort of
(08:40):
plug back into that because we all have it.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
We're speaking with John Russol, Associate Professor of English and
Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, and of course you're
going to be delivering a poem at the State of
the City address, and we don't want to spill the
beans early before that happens, but could you tell us,
could you share with us some of the themes that
(09:03):
you plan to incorporate into that poem.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Absolutely, when the Mayor's office contacted me, they gave me
the themes that she's going to be focusing on, and the
themes are generally resilience, the resilience of our city and
of our people. Rebounding from challenges and specifically the hurricane
(09:26):
season and rising up from those challenges. So those are
the those are the areas that I really wanted to address,
and I think I I think I did hit on them.
Part of the reason I think that this was a
good good is not the best word, but it was
a good project for me is because my family was
(09:50):
directly directly impacted by the hurricanes. Our homes were impacted.
My son's home was flooded, so I have a lot
of and then we had so many friends who, unfortunately
some of them lost everything. But I was able again
to draw and personal experience and empathy and compassion and observation,
(10:14):
all those things and the idea of rebounding and put
that into a poem. So I hope that the mayor
and everyone else at the city will think that I
did an okay job with that.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Now, before we started our conversation here, you mentioned that
you actually also have a part of a poem from
that's dedicated I believe. Is it dedicated to Seminole Heights?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well, I have, I have three books, and my second
book is called One House Down. I'll show Well, I
know we're on radio, but for you to see. Here's
a picture of it. The poems in that book are
all poems about being, you know, growing up in Tampa.
I'm a native. I've never lived anywhere else, and I've
(11:02):
lived the last thirty years in Seminal Heights, and so
the poems in the book have a very realistic, loving,
but realistic look at Seminal Heights in the South. So yeah,
I have I have plenty of poems in there. The
mayor tells me that she has read that book and
(11:23):
that it spoke to her. She felt that I really
kind of nailed the neighborhood. So I hope that's right.
I believe her.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Well, I have no doubt on that score. I'm sure,
not even having seen it. But if you want, if
you want to share a portion of one of those
poems or one of your excerpts with us, feel free
to do so.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Sure I would like to do that. I'm going to
choose a very very short poem called Memory and Green,
and this is a poem about growing up, but it's
also a poem about being very aware of all the
different shades of green in the world. And it starts
and ends with the green flash, which people who have
(12:07):
grown up in Florida, have heard about the green flash,
that mythical flash that you're supposed to see at sunset
over the golf. So it starts and ends with that,
but it's really just a list of things in green
when I'm growing up, So it's called memory and green
flash at sunset. I'm never seen over the golf. Rain
(12:28):
trudging up from the Atlantic high grass in the yards
on Ferris Drive, and green light of kickball games just
before dusk, voice of the whipper wheel. The Bob White
putred belly of a dead frog in the road, and
the kid we blindfolded and made step in it. We
were that ugly duck weed smothering the old ditch live
(12:51):
oak with the sap green leaves where we swayed above
the bad neighbor's yard, made up stories and practice kissing
green gold canes of the cracker roses lost to the yardman,
the lawn boy, the dark green whip of night blooming
serious that stuck itself to the magnolia tree and flowered
(13:11):
like New Year's Eve, vertigree wings of the dragonflies, milk
green of the evening moths. Rain like a woodblock print,
horizontal and ragged, hurricane colors and the gray green of
the eye flash at sunset like the luck I Never spied.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And that's Professor Gianarusso with Saint Leo University English and
Creative Writing, and she's going to be delivering a poem
about Tampa for the State of the City address on Monday,
April twenty eighth. Then that address is supposed to happen
at eleven o'clock Monday morning. Professor Russo, Jean Russo, thank
you very much for joining us here and best of success.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much
for including me.
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