Walking With Whitman: Poetry in Performance – Howie Faerstein, Robert Savino, Linda Sussman

Howie Faerstein is the author of 5 books: Play a Song on the Drums he said, Out of Order, (Main Street Press) & two full-length collections: Dreaming of the Rain in BrooklynandGoogootz and Other Poems, published by Press 53. STAY, a recent collection (Human Error Publishing) was published in February 2023. His poetry & reviews can be found in numerous journals including Great River Review, Nimrod, Off the Coast, Rattle, Cutthroat, upstreet, Banyan Review, Nine Mile, Verse Daily, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, Hole in the Head Review, Gyroscope, Peacock Journal, & Connotation. He’s read at venues throughout New England, the Mid-Atlantic & the Southwest. Howie also facilitates a weekly poetry discussion group through the Northampton, MA Forbes Library. A multiple Pushcart nominee, Cutthroat Discovery Poet, & recipient of the NOVA 2022 poetry prize, he’s co-poetry editor of Cutthroat & lives in Florence, MA. https://howiefaerstein.com

Robert Savino (born Jamaica, NY) is a native Long Island poet, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015-2017, Bards Laureate 2019-2021, Board Member at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and at the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository Center. He is the winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize, Association of Italian American Educators – Cristoforo Colombo Award for Literary Leadership (2019), and Town of Islip Italian American Heritage Award for Visual & Performing Arts – in Literature (2019). Robert was first inspired by Blake and Whitman in the sixties. His poetry has been widely published in journals, anthologies and online, including The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Long Island Quarterly, Mobius, Negative Capability, The North American Review and Sport Literate; and written for art and music. His poem, “October’s Opal,” was composed by Yung Shen Hsaio as a four-instrument musical ensemble piece and presented at the 2017 International Rostrum of Composers and Conservatorio Vincenzo Bellini, Palermo, Italy. He is co-editor of two bilingual collections of Italian Americans Poets, No Distance Between Us. His books include fireballs of an illuminated scarecrow, Inside a Turtle Shell and I’m Not the Only One Here. He lives in West Islip, NY, with his wife, Sabrina and enjoys the role of poet and mentor.