Join us in celebrating Harry Potter’s birthday with an entire week of fun at the Birthplace! Come for a specialized Harry Potter themed tour and test your knowledge of the book that kicked off the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Participants will walk away with a certificate and their very own “chocolate frog” treat after completing the tour.

We will have Harry Potter themed merch and Butterbeer for sale. Each day, participants will have to find the “Sorcerer’s Stone” in a different spot in the historic home where Walt was born as well as “Find Harry!”

$5 per person (adults, children, and seniors pay the same price)
*LIBRARY PASSES AND GROUPONS DO NOT APPLY TO THE HARRY POTTER TOUR*

Harry Potter tours start at 11:30am and run on the hour with the last tour at 3:30pm.
(Tour Times: 11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm)

Vienna, 1787: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the height of his powers but struggling financially, meets a serious and supremely confident teenager who knocks on his door hoping to hire him as a teacher: Ludwig Van Beethoven.

This comedic drama by award-winning playwright Jack Canfora imagines how the relationship between two of music’s towering geniuses – whom many scholars believe met in real life – might have evolved. Featuring some of the great works of each composer and some brilliantly imagined “collaborations,” The Vienna Lessons shows how these two men, separated by temperament and age, nonetheless find in each other the unique bond only true visionaries can share.

Jack Canfora’s Off-Broadway plays include Poetic License, (59E59 Theaters), hailed by the Associated Press as “White-hot entertainment,” and Jericho, (59E59 Theaters, a New York Times “Critic’s Pick”) which the Theater Communications Group deemed, “An important contribution to the repertoire of the American Stage.” Both plays are published, and his work has also been published in various theater anthologies. His play Place Setting, along with plays by Edward Albee, Elaine May, and Teresa Rebeck, was nominated for The Newark Star Ledger’s “Best Play” in 2007. His regional productions include Jericho, The Source, Poetic License, and Fellow Travelers. Jack has won two Edgerton Playwriting Awards, for Jericho (2010) and The Source (2018) as well as the 2016 Webby Award for Best Writing in a Web Series. He is also the Artistic Director of the New Normal Rep theater company. jackcanforawriter.com

Moe Seager lives in Paris and is declared Paris Jazz Poet Laureate 2024. He’s published 8 poetry collections and two jazz poetry studio albums. Active in Paris, NYC and elsewhere he recites spoken word and leads jazz poetry concerts with his ensemble Blue Note Metaphor. He hosts Angora Poets World Café in-bar and on Zoom. He’s translated in French, Italian, Arabic and Russian. Among recognitions he’s won the international poets prize for 100 Thousand Poets for Change hosted in Agadir, Morocco 2013 and the Best of Improvised Slam competition sponsored by Le Chat Noir Serries 2023. In 1992 and 1993 he featured twice for the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center Camden, New Jersey.

Danny Shot’s WORKS was published in 2018 by CavanKerry Press. His new collection The Jersey Slide is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. Recent endeavors include being an Associate Editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online (2020-2023) and Poetry Editor of Red Fez (2018-2021). You can hear him talk about his family on the recent podcast: LBI Presents, Ghosts of Your Family Past from the Leo Baeck Institute. Danny lives in Hoboken, NJ (home of Frank Sinatra and baseball) where he is poet-in-residence of the Hoboken Historical Museum. Danny Shot was longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982 in New Brunswick, NJ. Check out his website: dannyshot.com

Josie Bello is a Singer-Songwriter from Huntington.  Her songs tell stories that are relatable, and explore issues that are both timely and timeless. Her newest release “Have Purpose Live Long” (2020) and her debut album “Can’t Go Home” (2018) have both had extensive U.S. & International radio play with the albums and individual tracks appearing on an impressive number of radio charts.  Josie performs solo and with her band, “The Kit House Band”.  Her music is available everywhere including Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes and Amazon. For more information about Josie, you can visit her website at josiebello.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 Poets and Writers, The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation, NY State Parks, Suffolk County, Town of Huntington, and NYS Council on the Arts through Huntington Arts Council.

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three 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. In Season Three, 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.

THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT. 

Find Zoom Information Below.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>

Red Wheelbarrow Poets: Anton Yakovlev  |  Claudia Serea  |  Moira O’Brien

Anton Yakovlev’s most recent poetry chapbook Chronos Dines Alone (SurVision Books, 2018) won the James Tate Prize. He is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Daily, upstreet, The Hopkins Review, Plume, and elsewhere. The Last Poet of the Village: Selected Poems by Sergei Yesenin translated by Anton Yakovlev was published by Sensitive Skin Books in 2019. Anton co-hosts the Carmine Street Metrics reading series in Manhattan and the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow reading series in Rutherford, New Jersey. He is a former education director at Bowery Poetry Club.

Moira O’Brien writes poetry on themes of physical and social loss with the occasional respite into nature. She is a member of the Red Wheelbarrow poetry group and has been published in several editions of the Red Wheelbarrow anthology.

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-American poet with poems published in Consequence, Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Puritan, Oxford Poetry, among others. Her poems have been translated in Russian, French, Italian, Arabic, and Farsi, and have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac. She is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently In Those Years, No One Slept (Broadstone Books, 2023). Serea won a Pushcart Prize, the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, and the New Letters Readers Award for her poems. She is a founding editor of National Translation Month, serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, and co-hosts their monthly readings.

Southern New Mexico: John Roche  |  Tim Staley, Elise Stuart  |  Bruce Holsapple  |  Michelle Otero

John Roche lives in Placitas, NM where he helps Jules Nyquist run Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and edit Poetry Playhouse Publications. He is the author of five full-length collections, including Joe Rides Again (FootHills Publishing 2020).

A former Albuquerque Poet Laureate, Michelle Otero’s recent verse-and-prose memoir, Vessels: A Memoir of Borders (FlowerSong Press, 2023), deals with her childhood and young adulthood in and near Deming, New Mexico.

Tim Staley lives in Las Cruces, NM. He is the author of Lost On My Own Street, The Most Honest Syllable is Shhh, and The Pieces You Have Left.  He is faculty at Organ Mountain High School and founder/editor of Grandma Moses Press.

Elise Stuart resides in Silver City, NM and was Poet Laureate of Grant County, NM from 2014-2017. She is the author of a collection of poems, Another Door Calls, and a memoir, My Mother and I, We Talk Cat.

Bruce Holsapple lives in Magdalena, NM and has published seven books of poetry, including Wayward Shadow (La Alameda Press, 2013). His study of William Carlos Williams’ poetry, The Birth of the Imagination, was published by the University of New Mexico in 2016. He is currently at work on two new manuscripts, Sun, Wind, Rain and Strange Minstrelsy.

Indian Poets:  Sriramgokul Chinnasamy  |  G Vasanthakumaran  |  Sowrabha Karinje  |  Nitin Kulkarni, Dr Sonali Pattnaik

Sriramgokul Chinnasamy lives in Chennai, India and has M.A. in Creative Writing from Teesside University, UK. He is the author of  The Selfie Boy short story collection and A Teesside Girl poetry collection. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Ireland, Singapore, Canada and India. He also organizes ‘The Bharathi Open-Mic’ online poetry event.

G Vasanthakumaran has his six poetry collections published in Tamil, first one in 1986 and the latest in 2020. English translations of his poems have appeared in Indian Literature, India’s oldest journal. Madras Christian College, Chennai has made his collection Manidan Enbadhu Punai Peyar as a part of their curriculum for Tamil studies. His interviews with many Tamil poets have appeared as a series in the Tamil weekly, Kumudam.

Sowrabha Karinje is a writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry in Kannada and English. Her stories, poems and articles have appeared in anthologies, magazines and blogs. She has done extensive translation work in the English-Kannada language pair. A techie by profession, she is curious about everything under the sun. When she isn’t busy writing, she is either cooking, traveling or playing badminton.

Nitin Kulkarni is from Pune, Maharashtra. His Marathi poems are published in various literary magazines. He is the author two poetry collections Everything Looks So Safe, Isn’t It?, 2001 and A Collage Of Noises, 2014. He also writes lyrics for musical albums and Hindi songs.

Dr Sonali Pattnaik (Phd) is a poet, academic, educator and visual artist from India. She was formerly Lecturer in English at Kirori Mal College, Delhi University and currently Visiting Professor of English at St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad. Her debut book of poetry ‘when the flowers begin to speak’ is published by Writers Workshop.

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

Kate Kelly is a published poet and visual artist.

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three 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. In Season Three, 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.

THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT. 

Find Zoom Information Below.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>

NBPF Poets:  Deb Kilday  |  Paul Richmond  |  Linda Wlodyka  |  Belinda Subraman

Debbie Tosun Kilday is a Beat Poet, writer, award winning author, nature photographer, artist and owner/CEO of the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc., it’s Festivals, and New Generation Beat Publications. She is the author of several books, short stories and poetry. She has appeared on tv and radio. Debbie is a Connecticut native and resident. http://nationalbeatpoetryfoundation.org

Belinda Subraman has been writing poetry for decades. She had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine (1984-94). Six of those ten years were from Germany where she published Bukowski and Burroughs. She currently is editor of GAS: Poetry, Art and Music which is an online zine, a video show and a group on Facebook. She is currently editing a book called Border Beats which will offer a balanced look of life on the border of the U.S. and Mexico.

Linda Bratcher Wlodyka retired as an educator from Mt. Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown in 2020. She has 3 chapbooks previously self-published, Her Spirited Cameo, Voices from the Blue Room and Tick Tock  If Brambles Were Bookends is Linda’s first full length poetry collection. A member of the Florence Poet’s Society, she has held the position as a docent at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s summer home in Lenox, MA.

Paul Richmond‘s poetry is described as political, deadpan and wryly humorous delivered in his own style. He has been called, “Assassin of Apathy” – “power of words / humor – on the unthinkable, the unsolvable, to analyze, to digest, to give birth, to creativity and hope.”  He has performed nationally and internationally. He created the project “Do It Now” He is also a publisher of over 50 writers and has 7 books himself.

Three Rooms Press: Kat Georges  |  Maw Shein Win  |  SA Griffin  |  Peter Carlaftes

Kat Georges is a poet, playwright, editor, publisher, and graphic designer, specializing in digital, interactive, and book design. Her books include two poetry collections (Awe and Other Words Like Wow and Our Lady of the Hunger), a collection of plays Three Somebodies: Plays about Notorious Dissidents, and several chapbooks including Punk Rock Journal and Maiden Claiming. With Peter Carlaftes, she co-edited the Have a NYC mystery/noir short story series. She is co-editor of the annual journal MAINTENANT: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art. She is co-director for Three Rooms Press, a New York-based independent publisher inspired by diversity, dada, punk, and passion. She lives in New York City.

Maw Shein Win’s most recent poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn), nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA’s Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. Previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. Win’s Process Note Series features poets and their process. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA and teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and was recently selected as a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary community.

S.A. Griffin lives, loves and works in Los Angeles. Publishing on his own Rose of Sharon imprint since 1988, he is the editor of The Official Language of Yes! (Perceval Press) by Scott Wannberg, co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth Press) for which he received the Firecracker Award, and Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press). Published widely, he is most recently the author of Pandemic Soul Music (Punk Hostage Press). Carma Bum, father, husband, cat lover and Vietnam era veteran of the USAF.

Peter Carlaftes is a publisher, poet, author, and actor. His books include three poetry collections (Life in the Past Lane, I Fold with the Hand I Was Dealt, and Drunkyard Dog), two collections of plays (Triumph for Rent and Teatrophy) and the humorous multimedia book A Year on Facebook. He is co-editor of the annual Dada writing and art journal, MAINTENANT. With Kat Georges, he co-edited the Have a NYC mystery/noir short story series. He also edited The Faking Of The President: 19 Stories Of White House Noir. He is co-director for Three Rooms Press, a New York-based independent publisher inspired by diversity, dada, punk, and passion. He lives in New York City.

Armenian Diaspora: Lola Koundakjian  |  Lory Bedikian  |   Shahé Mankerian  |  Nora Baroudjian

Lola Koundakjian (www.lolakoundakjian.com) is an Armenian poet, editor and translator living in New York City since 1979. She runs the Dead Armenian Poetry Society and curates and produces poems and audio for the online Armenian Poetry Project. Lola’s translations from Western Armenian to English are published widely. Since 2010, Lola has read her work at six international poetry festivals. In 2021 her third book — The Moon in the Cusp on my Hand — won the Minas and Kohar Tololyan Prize in Contemporary Literature. Lola serves on the board of the International Armenian Poetry Association.

Lory Bedikian earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and her collection The Book of Lamenting was awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Several of her poems received the First Prize Award in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry as part of the 2022 Nimrod Literary Awards. A manuscript-in-progress received a 2021 grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.

Poet Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School. He is on the board of International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). His inaugural poetry collection, History of Forgetfulness, was published by the Fly on the Wall Press in October of 2021.

Born in Lebanon and a graduate of Yerevan state university’s philology department, Nora Baroudjian started her career in journalism, joining editorial boards at Zartonk (Lebanon) and Nor Haratch ( Paris) with additional collaborations with Diasporan newspapers. She settled in France in 1986, where she teaches Armenian language and history in a school near Paris. In 2020 she formed the Swallow ԾԻԾԵՌՆԱԿ www.dzidzernag.wordpress.com blog for Armenian youth.

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

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three 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. In Season Three, 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.

THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT. 

Find Zoom Information Below.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>

Flash Boulevard Writers: Francine Witte  |  Gary Fincke  |  Myna Chang  |  Chelsea Stickle

Francine Witte is the author of 11 books of poetry and flash fiction. She is also a playwright. Her stories and poems have appeared in many anthologies including, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, Flash Fiction America, New Micro, NYC from the Inside as well as national journals. She is the flash fiction editor of FLASH BOULEVARD and South Florida Poetry Journal. Visit her website at francinewitte.com.

Gary Fincke, co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction, published a collection of flash fiction in 2022 with Pelekinesis Press. His long-form collections of short stories have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize and the Elixir Press Fiction prize. His most recent book is The Mayan Syndrome: Essays, published in 2023 by Madhat Press. Its lead essay “After the Three-Moon Era” was reprinted in Best American essays 2020.

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain. Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton) and Best Small Fictions. Awards include the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction, the CutBank Books Chapbook Award, and the CRAFT Creative NonFiction Editor’s Choice Award. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. See more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.

Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Her stories appear in The Citron Review, Peatsmoke Journal, 100 Word Story, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Her micros have been selected for Best Microfiction 2021, the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2022 and the Wigleaf Longlist in 2023. She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Read more at chelseastickle.com.

Northport NY Poets: Bruce Johnson  |  Emily-Sue Sloan  |  Phil Asaph  |  Linda Trott Dickman  |  Bill Graeser

Bruce Johnson is a lifelong resident of Long Island and has lived in Northport, NY for 25 years. He started writing poetry in 1990 and has been published in several journals, most notably the Long Island Quarterly. Bruce has published a full length book of poetry, Borderlands and Dreams, and is working on a second volume. With George Wallace he co-founded the Huntington Poets Café, a monthly poetry venue.

Bill Graeser currently lives in Iowa but is native to Long Island and formerly lived in Northport, NY. He has been published in the North American Review, TelePoem Both, Lyrical Iowa, and Long Island Quarterly. He is the winner of Iowa Poetry Association’s 2012 Norman Thomas Memorial Award and is author of two books of poetry: Fire in a Nutshell and Rushing is a Waste of Time, available at Lulu Press.

Phil Asaph was born and grew up in Huntington, NY. He is a transplant to the Ithaca, NY area where he continues to write prolifically and where he is a meditation teacher. Phil is happy to teach his meditation method to anyone who wants to learn—if you don’t have the money, he’ll teach you for free. Phil has published poems in Long Island Quarterly, Tampa Review and Poetry.

Linda Trott Dickman has been writing poetry since her first sleep-away camp experience when she was ten years old in the High Sierras in California. She is a recently retired school librarian and is poetry coordinator for the Northport Arts Coalition where she runs a monthly poetry reading. She serves on the education committee of the Northport Historical Society and leads a poetry workshop at Samantha’s Li’l Bit O’ Heaven coffee house in East Northport. Linda teaches poetry workshops at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington and the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport. She is the author of the following books: Robes, The Art of Being Covered, The Air That I Breathe, Road Trip, Road Trip 2: On the Road Again, and Catching the Light.

Emily-Sue Sloane is an award-winning poet from Huntington Station, NY. After retiring from a career in business-technology publishing, she happily resumed a long-dormant poetry practice. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, We Are Beach Glass (2022), and her poetry has won first-place awards in contests held by Calling All Writers, the Long Island Fair, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society, Performance Poets Association and Princess Ronkonkoma Productions. Her poems have appeared in many online and print journals and anthologies, including Corona; Evening Street Review; Front Porch Review; Long Island Quarterly; Long Island Sounds Anthology; Mobius Magazine; Mocking Heart Review; Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review; The Ravens Perch; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies Anthology. She lives with her wife, singer-songwriter Linda Sussman.

South Asian Diaspora: Pramila Venkateswaran  |  Zilka Joseph  |  Megha Sood  |  Kalpa Singh-Chitnis

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and more recently, We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022). She has performed internationally, including at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Festival Internacional De Poesia De Granada. An award winning poet, she teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. Her critical essays on Dalit poetry appear in recent issues of International Women’s Studies Journal, Journal of Contemporary Poetics, and Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. She leads writing workshops for breast cancer patients in their healing journey. She is a founding member of Women Included, a transnational feminist association and the current President of NOW Suffolk, Long Island.

Zilka Joseph has authored five collections of poetry. Her books were nominated for PEN, ABA, and Pushcart awards. She has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. Her work is influenced by her Indian and Bene Israel roots, and Western cultures. She is the recipient of a Zell Fellowship, the Michael Gutterman award, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the University of Michigan. Her recent chapbook Sparrows and Dust won a Notable Best Indie Book award and was a Notable Asian American Poetry Book, and her new book, In Our Beautiful Bones, is a Foreword INDIES finalist. Born and brought up in India, she now lives in Michigan, USA. She is a creative writing coach, a manuscript advisor and freelance editor.

Megha Sood is an Award-winning Asian American Poet, Editor, and Literary Activist from New Jersey, USA. She is a Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Member of National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), Women’s National Book Association, and United Nations Association-US Chapter. She is the recipient of the 2021 Poet Fellowship from MVICW (Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creating Writing), a 2022 mini-grant for Kundiman, a 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project, and a Four-Time State Level Winner for NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Poetry Award. Her works have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net. She is an Associate Editor for the literary journals Mookychick(UK) and Brownstone Poets (USA). Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2022). Her widely anthologized poems, essays, and other works talk about her experience as a first-generation immigrant and woman of color. Her co-edited anthology and a few selected poems The Medusa Project has been selected as a digital payload to be sent to the moon in 2024 as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of six poetry collections, including “Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava” (River Paw Press), a finalist at the 2023 International Book Awards, and “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands,” forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her works have appeared in notable journals and anthologies worldwide. Notably, “Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope, and Peace,” an anthology curated and edited by her, was shortlisted for the 2023 National Indie Excellence® Awards. Her poetry has been translated into eighteen languages. In addition to being a nominee for a Pushcart Prize, she is a recipient of the “Bihar Rajbhasha Award,” “Rajiv Gandhi Global Excellence Award,” and “Bihar Shri.” Poems from her award-winning book “Bare Soul” and her poetry film “River of Songs” have been selected to go to the moon with NASA’s missions in 2023. A former lecturer of Political Science, she is also an Advocacy Member at the United Nations Association of the USA.

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

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three 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. In Season Three, 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.

THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT. 

Find Zoom Information Below.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>

Flower Litter Poets: Mimi German  |  Karlostheunhappy  |  Pankhuri Sinha

Mimi German is an American poet who resides in the Steens Mountain wilderness of Oregon listening to the songs of Coyote coming down from the hills. She is Oregon’s first Beat Poet Laureate and the author of Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars, Where Grasses Bend, and Flowers of the Litter.  

Pankhuri Sinha Bilingual poet, story writer and translator from India. Two poetry collections published in English, two story collections published in Hindi, six poetry collections published in Hindi, and many more are lined up. Has been published in many journals, anthologies, home and abroad. Has won many prestigious, national-international awards, like the Girija Kumar Mathur Award, Chitra Kumar Shailesh Matiyani Award, Seemapuri Times Rajeev Gandhi Excellence Award, First prize for poetry by Rajasthan Patrika, awards in Chekhov festival in Yalta and in Premio Besio Poetry competition in Italy, Sahitto award in Bangladesh, and Premio Galateo in Italy for poetry in mother tongue. Has been translated in over twenty seven languages.

Karlostheunhappy hails from the dark Forest of Dean, England. His work has featured in International Times, Beatdom and numerous anthologies. His first collection was published by Gloomy for Pleasure in 2021, entitled OBLIVION: 200 Seasons (of pain and magic) and collects 30 years of writing. His second collection is called FLUX: the turning leaves.

Bolton UK: Dave Morgan  |  Linda Downs  |  David Wigmore  |   Laura Taylor

Dave Morgan is a writer and specialist in community learning. He has recently produced a series of radio plays for Bolton FM inspired by the work of local community groups. He is addicted to organising things and is responsible for open mic nights, jazz events, cultural cabarets, workshops and anthologies as part of his executive role with Bolton voluntary organisation Live from Worktown. He is currently editing his second poetry collection for Flapjack Press.

Linda Downs is a housing officer from Manchester who supports the homeless. Linda found her voice after leaving a relationship in lockdown. She has been sharing her work ever since at open mics and is a regular contributor to North West publications and anthologies. A champion of the under-dog, her writing explores love, trauma and a woman’s place in society.

Dave Wigmore uses imagined tales of washed-up minor celebrities, half-heard stories passed down through his family, and brief encounters with strangers, to create a surreal and peculiar world, attempting to examine who we are behind our facade of pride and affectation. We live small, mundane lives that are richly dressed with subtle acts of kindness, humour and humanity. Dave is from Bolton, northern England. He wants his poems to inspire a sense of laughter and fun, warmth and love, and just a tiny amount of menace.

Obsessed with words and language since her early childhood, Laura Taylor believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen. She is a regular performer at festivals, gigs and fundraisers. Now in her prime, she understands fully the potency of kindness in a world intent on creating division. Her drabble pamphlet, Dear Audrey (and other drabbles) was published in February 2022. Her third poetry collection was published by Flapjack Press in August 2021. ‘Speaking in Tongues’ is a rallying call for action and challenges inequality, oppression and division with passion, objectivity, empathy and humour. It explores the slippery and inconclusive condition of language, the power of ideology, and the process of myth-making.

Cleveland Poets: John Burroughs  |  Judith Mansour  |  Dianne Borsenik

John Burroughs of Cleveland is the 2022-2023 U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate. He previously served as the 2019-2021 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate. He is a dynamic performer who has wowed audiences from Oakland to New York City and myriad points in between. His dozen plus books include, most recently, The Wrest of the Worthwhile (2023, Far Queue Press) and Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 (2019, Venetian Spider Press). He currently maintains the Cleveland Poetics blog and Northeast Ohio literary calendar and has served since 2008 as the founding editor for Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing over one hundred books by esteemed writers from around the world. Find him at www.crisischronicles.com.

Judith Mansour taught English at Cleveland State University, worked as editor and associate publisher for Northern Ohio Live Magazine, senior editor for Angle Magazine, and publisher for Fresh Water Cleveland. During her tenure as executive director at The LIT: Cleveland’s Literary Center, which sadly closed in 2011, she conceived of MUSE magazine which spotlighted the interplay of words and images, with art director Tim Lachina. She has worked in the academic, nonprofit, and arts community for too long to acknowledge. Her life is ruled by love of her family, words, food, and a pack of unruly cats who barely tolerate her, her husband, and daughter living in their home. She currently works as Chief Advancement Officer at Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights. Kan Zaman, published by Crisis Chronicles Press, is her first full collection of poetry and prose.

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern and mid-Ohio poetry communities. Recent work has appeared in I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), Songs of Wild Ohio (Last Exit Press, 2023), and Poem for Cleveland (Red Giant Books, 2023). Raga for What Comes Next, a full-length collection of Borsenik’s poems, was featured in the 2023 Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course at Muskingum University. A new collection, Flight of Honey, was published earlier this year by Luchador Press. Speak of the Devil, an award-winning cocktail bar in Lorain, Ohio, named a cocktail after her (“Borsenik’s Law”), and Lit Youngstown printed her poem “Disco” on their tee shirts, both of which make her feel like a rock star. Find her on Facebook and at www.dianneborsenik.com.

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