Wild Bloom Poetry, helmed by Stella Amador, is indeed blooming.
Credit: Christelle Eloi
A year ago, Wild Bloom Poetry was little more than an idea sparked by a simple question.
After publishing her first book, Fort Lauderdale resident Stella Amador met a friend for coffee. He asked what was next. The answer, it turned out, would become one of Broward County’s most welcoming creative communities.
On Wednesday, June 17, Wild Bloom Poetry celebrates its first anniversary at Emily’s Garden in Fort Lauderdale, marking 12 months of open mics, new friendships and hundreds of local poets finding the courage to step behind a microphone.
Amador’s path to poetry wasn’t exactly conventional.
Originally from Nicaragua, she moved to South Florida as a child and eventually built a career helping businesses grow. She spent more than two decades as a growth consultant and owned a roofing company for 11 years before selling the business and pursuing a creative chapter she had largely kept to herself.
“When I decided to step up to the mic after being a secret poet for most of my life, it changed me,” Amador tells Browardist. “Something inside of me clicked.”
That transformation led to the publication of her book, Plant Your Life Planner, and eventually Wild Bloom Poetry. What started as a personal quest to meet other poets quickly exposed a gap in Broward’s arts scene.
“I realized there was nothing in Fort Lauderdale that was poetry-specific,” she said. “There was a lot of open mics that were great, but they weren’t poetry-specific.”
The first gatherings took place at a friend’s bakery with roughly 20 attendees. Within two months, the crowd had outgrown the space. Wild Bloom relocated to Emily’s Garden, where events now regularly draw around 60 people, with 20 to 25 poets sharing their work each month. Its largest gathering welcomed approximately 120 attendees.
For Amador, the numbers tell only part of the story.
One of her favorite success stories involves a group of women who arrived at early events alone and skeptical. A year later, they attend arts events together throughout South Florida after meeting through Wild Bloom.
Another poet, Jen, shared her work publicly for the first time last fall. Today, she’s preparing her first chapbook and exploring a larger poetry collection.
“I’ve seen her go from, ‘I don’t want to share, I’m not ready,’ to now she’s embraced the poet, the writer,” Amador said. “It’s very nice. It’s rewarding.”
The philosophy behind Wild Bloom is rooted in creating a space where people feel seen.
“One of the cornerstones of my events is presence,” Amador said. “We give each poet that steps on stage their moment in the sun.”
That atmosphere has encouraged audience members who arrive with no intention of reading to step forward by evening’s end. In one memorable case, a bakery owner who had never attended a poetry event wrote his first poem after being inspired by the gathering.
As Wild Bloom enters year two, Amador has her sights set on something bigger: a Wild Bloom Poetry Festival in downtown Fort Lauderdale later this year.
“I have been dreaming of a poetry festival for a really long time,” she said.
For now, though, the community she envisioned over coffee is flourishing right in her own backyard.
For more information and to RSVP for the one-year anniversary event, visit eventbrite.com.
