Healing Verse turns grief into public art in Germantown
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
A poet shares her work during one of several Healing Verses sessions. Photo: Courtesy of Messina Martinez
Darlene Wilson-Bennett's life is like a "book with many missing pages" — torn out the day her son, Justin, was fatally shot in 2009.
The big picture: She wrote those words in a poem, "Mama Song," 16 years ago. Now, they'll be part of a massive art installation in Germantown next month, memorializing lives lost to gun violence across Philadelphia.
State of play: Philadelphia is on pace to have fewer than 100 homicides in 2026, a turnaround from a historic surge in gun violence during the pandemic.
- The Healing Verse project, led by former city poet laureates Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta Mayson, weaves together the trauma felt by thousands of Philly families through the voices of 19 poets who have also experienced loss.
Driving the news: The 14 art installations — plus another five at various bus shelters — are being unveiled across Germantown on April 11, including at the EMIR Healing Center and Vernon Park, and will be on display through June.
- Some installations could become part of the city's permanent art collection or remain in place through agreements with host sites.
Catch up quick: Mayson and Wisher led writing workshops between fall 2024 and spring 2025 that drew people from all walks of life — young and old, seasoned poets and first-time writers.
- Organizers reviewed more than 200 submissions before selecting the poems, including a piece from an anonymous Philadelphia police officer.
What they're saying: Carmelo Whitehead, an 18-year-old University of Miami student, tells Axios he immediately connected to a prompt at one of the sessions asking him to imagine staring out a window.
- It transported him to his childhood, when he played with toy cars on the windowsill of his grandmother's third-floor Philadelphia apartment while watching trees sway in the breeze and listening as she talked with friends on the phone.
- His poem honors his slain uncle. They had a secret handshake and bonded over a love of cars and playing video games at Dave & Buster's.
"I just didn't understand why there was so much evil in the world," Whitehead said. "But I didn't want to become that evil. I wanted to focus on myself and heal."
Between the lines: Each installation offers a glimpse into the poets' inner worlds as they process feelings of loss, forgiveness, hope and emotional resilience, public art coordinator Rob Blackson tells Axios.
Case in point: The police officer's poem — seven lines that take about seven seconds to read — captures a calming exercise the officer quietly repeats when arriving at a traumatic scene. It's being distributed to every city first responder on small placards that can be tucked into the inner band of their service caps, where many keep family photos or other mementos.
- Another poet's work is inscribed on custom vases that are being handed out by a local florist for free on certain days.
- Wilson-Bennett's poem is featured in an evocative video that'll play at the EMIR Center, showing mothers taking turns reading lines in a moving montage.
Zoom in: Wilson-Bennett said her son was a complicated child who kept his deeper thoughts and emotions to himself, loved 2Pac and "Jeopardy," and, in his own way, taught her not to banish the parts of herself that made her a natural advocate.
The bottom line: For Wilson-Bennett — and many mothers across Philadelphia — the project is one way to keep their children's legacies alive.