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  • Address: 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station, NY 11746
  • Hours: Wednesday – Friday 1pm-4pm | Saturday & Sunday 11am-4pm

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Upcoming Events

Walking With Whitman – Valery Oisteanu, Stefanie Maura

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association (WWBA) presents  “Walking With Whitman: Poetry in Performance,” hosted by Writer-in-Residence George Wallace. The signature series, now in its 13th season, continues to bring the most intriguing figures in contemporary literature on the national scene paired with local poets on the Walt Whitman Stage.

Friday, March 3rd Walking With Whitman will feature Valery Oisteanu, author of 18 books of poetry, a book of short fiction:” The King of Penguins” (Linear Art Press, 2000) and a book of essays (in progress):” The AVANT-GODS and Stefanie Maura, whose poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including: Southword, Long Island Quarterly, Big City Lit, Silver Birch Press, and Token Entry: New York City Subway Poems. Join us for this exciting event!

Refreshments will be served. No registration is required. There is a $10 entry fee for this event that will be collected at the door or can be paid in advance, see below.

Valery Oisteanu is a poet, writer, and artist of the avant-garde. Born in USSR (1943) and educated in Romania. He debuted as a poet with the collection PROSTHESIS in 1970(Litera Press, Bucharest). At the age of 20, he adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life and a few years later English as his primary language. Immigrating to New York City in 1972 he has been writing in English for the past 50 years. He is the author of 18 books of poetry, a book of short fiction:” The King of Penguins” (Linear Art Press, 2000) and a book of essays (in progress):” The AVANT-GODS.  Two new books are just out: In the Blink of a Third Eye (Spuyten Duyvil Press NYC 2020) and Perks in Purgatory (translated in Romanian) Itaca Publishing Dublin 2020 & was chosen best poetry book of the year in Dublin. Over the last 10 years he wrote art criticism for Brooklyn Rail, artnet.com, Whitehot Magazine, and NY Arts. He is also a contributing writer for French, Spanish & Romanian art and literary magazines (La Page Blanche, Art.es, Viata Romanesca, Observatorul Cultural, Artout.ro, levurelitteraire.com, etc) As an artist he exhibits collages and assemblages on a regular basis at galleries in New York and also creates collages as covers and illustrations for books and magazines. He has performed in theater and in poetry-musical collaborations with jazz artists from all over the world in sessions known as Jazzoetry. His work has appeared in international surrealist publications of the last four decades, including: Dream Helmet (1978), What Will Be (Brumes Blondes, 2014) Phala (Sao Paulo, Brazil), The Annual (Phasm Press, 2015) etc

Member of Poets and Writers, Inc. New York (1977-2022)

Founding member of PASS (Poets and Artists Surrealist Society) 1977-2022

“It’s the end of the World as we know it” Award (Vault Literary Society) 2000 award for exceptional cutting edge artists who constantly take risks with their art)

Awarded:  Gold Chivot order of the Chevalier of the Castel for the dissemination of Romanian Avant-Garde in Diaspora, 2010, Republic of Prose Readers, London

Recipient of the Kathy Acker Award, NYC, 2013, for contribution to the American avant-garde in Poetry Performance.

 

Stefanie Maura is a poet, librarian, and founder of the Writing Yoga® method. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including: Southword, Long Island Quarterly, Big City Lit, Silver Birch Press, and Token Entry: New York City Subway Poems. She has facilitated workshops at Hofstra University, Queens College, the New York City Open Center and at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. She was the co-host of Poetry at Cedarmere for several years and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens College. Read more at www.StefanieMaura.com.

Make a meaningful gift to support our poetry programs:  https://www.paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/2197152

This program is made possible with funds from NY State Parks, Suffolk County, Town of Huntington, and NYS Council on the Arts through Huntington Arts Council.

 

Date: Friday, March 3, 2023
Start Time: 7:00 pm EST

Cost: $ 10

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POETS BUILDING BRIDGES Series 2, February 2023 – Kansas City, Columbia, Florence MA / Silkworm

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season two of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES: A TRIANGULATION PROJECT, inaugurated in March 2022 with the purpose of enhancing dialogue between communities of writers across the US and internationally. Based on a shared small-group experience, these Saturday zoom sessions engage three distinct and well defined communities of poets with each other to share work and foster further interaction. THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT.

Season One triangulated groups by location — from the US, UK, Italy, South America, the Balkans, the Near East and India.

In Season Two, POETS BUILDING BRIDGES will build on that experience, triangulating national and international groups based not only on location but additionally offering key small press publications an opportunity to form a participating group.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube.

Kansas City:  Shawn Pavey  |  John Dorsey  |  Jason Ryberg

Shawn Pavey is the author of Talking to Shadows (Main Street Rag Press, 2008), Nobody Steals the Towels From a Motel 6 (Spartan Press, 2015), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse (2019, Spartan Press) – which was 1st runner up for the 2020 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award – and co-author of Even If We Did, So What!? (2021, OAC Books).  He co-founded The Main Street Rag Literary Journal and served as an Associate Editor.
John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is The Great American Pyramid Scheme (co-authored with W.E. Leathem, Tim Tarkelly and Mack Thorn, OAC Books, 2022). He lives part-time in Kansas City, Missouri with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Columbia:  Adriana Hoyos  |  Miguel Iriarte  |  Anabel Torres

Adriana Hoyos is a writer, filmmaker and cultural manager born in Bogotá. As a filmmaker, she has directed the short films Elegía (1998) and Hotel Santa Fe (2002), along with the medium–length film Beneyto desdoblándose, about the figure and work of the artist. In 2005 he founded the production company La Huella del Gato. For fourteen years she co–directed the Visual Cine Novísimo Festival. As a writer she has participated in international poetry meetings in Colombia,  Denmark, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Macedonia, Serbia, Sweden and Turkey. Her poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies and have been translated into different languages: Albanian, Arabic, French, English, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Swedish, Romanian. She published La torre sumergida (2007), La mirada desobediente (2013), Del otro lado (2017) y No es a mí a quien lees (2022).

Miguel Iriarte (Colombia, 1957) is a poet, cultural journalist, essayist and for twenty five years professor of Semiotics and Communications in Barranquilla. He’s considered one of the most representative poets of the Colombian Caribbean coast. He’s one of the founders of PoemaRío International Poetry Fest. He has published several books of poetry like Cámara de Jazz, Doy mi palabra, Semana Santa de mi Boca, Segundas intenciones, and others. He’s also the editor of the arts and culture review, Viacuarenta. He’s the current director of La Cueva, a distinguished cultural foundation from Barranquilla city.
Anabel Torres is a Colombia poet, writer, translator and interpreter. She was born in Bogotá and lived part of her childhood and adolescence in New York City. Torres was subdirector of Colombia’s National Library between 1983 and 1987 and lives abroad ever since. She has an official translation license from the Colombian Ministry of justice, earned an M.A. in Women and Development at the Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, and has earned a certificate for science translation from the Institute of Linguists in London. She has won two national poetry awards in Colombia (Nariño and Antioquia Universities); first prize in a British Centre for Literary Translation’s literary translation competition, with her translation of poet Jose Manuel Arango´s “This Place in the Night”, published by Cambridge Press, and a Rei en Jaume first prize, in the Poetry in English category, for her book of poems “Human Wrongs” (Calvià, Mallorca). Torres has published short stories, essays and poems in various anthologies and periodicals. She has published 11 books of poetry, among these, one bilingual and one only in English, and two books in prose illustrated by her. She translates poetry from and to English and Spanish. Currently she lives in Sanlucar la mayor, Spain.

Florence MA/Silkworm:  Tommy Twilite  |  Howie Faerstein  |  Edward Bruce Bynum

Tommy Twilite is a poet, songwriter and performer who lives in Florence Massachusetts. He is the Co-founder and Director of the Florence Poets Society, and Executive Editor of Silkworm, the Society’s annual review. Tommy is the current Beat Poet Laureate of Massachusetts and the host of the Twilite Poetry Pub on WXOJ-FM Valley Free Radio. His first full length collection, Fifty Words for Rain was published in 2021.

Howie Faerstein, a graduate of New England College’s MFA Program, is the author of the chapbooks: Play a Song on the Drums, he said and Out of Order (Main Street Rag) and two full-length collections: Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn and Googootz and Other Poems, both published by Press 53. His poetry and reviews can be found in numerous journals including Great River Review, Nimrod, CutThroat, Off the Coast, Rattle, upstreet, Nine Mile and on-line in Verse Daily, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, Hole in the Head Review, Peacock Journal, and Connotation. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he’s co-poetry editor of Cutthroat, volunteers as a mentor at the Center for New Americans, and lives in Florence, Massachusetts.
Edward Bruce Bynum is the author of several books of poetry and the winner of the national Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize for Chronicles of the Pig & Other Delusions. He lives in the Amherst Massachusetts area.

Walt Whitman Birthplace Events & Media Director is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

 

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POETS BUILDING BRIDGES is produced by Poetrybay Productions for the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023
Start Time: 12:00 pm EST
  • Cost: Free
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2022 Student Poetry Contest

The year 2022 brings a sense of renewal, especially after one of the world’s worst pandemics. Renewal is defined as replenishing or to fill with inspiration. Renewal makes us think of rebirth, growth, or re-growth. Renewal allows us to imagine and dream. Renewal gives us hope. Click below to learn more about this year’s poetry contest focused on Renewal!

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