Walking With Whitman featuring Gregory Leadbetter, Tom Stock, and Rorie Kelly.

Art and Poetry Virtual Workshop: Exploring the Relationship between Images & Words with Karen De Mauro and Caitlyn Shea.

Event Video Link:  https://youtu.be/GWOXss1JdzI

A virtual workshop exploring practices that combine imagery and text in compelling ways to deepen the expressive power of both. Find out how words and art change each other to make a new meaningful hybrid mode/form.

Karen De Mauro is Artistic Director of The Acting Center in New York City, a company that facilitates “the actor in everyone” from corporate executives to Broadway professionals to school children. She leads The Center for Nature Writing at Seatuck and has written and performed throughout United States, Canada, the UK and Japan. She runs Naturestages, is an active member of NYC Urban Sketchers, teaches multi-art workshops for Asian venues like the Japanese Stroll Garden and the NOHO International Arts Company. She directed and performed at The United Nations, The Smithsonian Institution, and, most recently on The High Line and The Alvin Ailey Theatre for “Discover NY”. Karen has been an Artist in Residence and Teaching Artist for over 40 years.

WWBA Events and Media Director Caitlyn Shea is passionate about making art, poetry, and history accessible to everyone. When she is not planning poetic and scholarly events with the Birthplace, she is creating public artworks to revitalize and celebrate communities through creative placemaking. She fundraised for and created a hummingbird mural on the side of a vacant Main Street building in Riverhead, NY. In 2016 she received a stipend from 40 West Arts and participated in Denver MuralFest. She created her “Masked Medusa” mural at Spotlight NY in Huntington during the 2020 pandemic. In 2021 her design was chosen for Walt Whitman Initiative’s annual “Song of Myself” Marathon poster and Zoom background. She exhibits paintings in Long Island, NYC, and nationally. Currently, Shea is creating a “coming of age” theme mural commissioned by Patchogue Arts Council on the back of Patchogue-Medford Library, which will raise awareness about cicadas being endangered on Long Island. Follow her: @CaitlynArtist

“To Bryant, The Poet Of Nature”: A Virtual Walking Tour with Andrew Rimby about Walt Whitman and William Cullen Bryant’s Transcendental Relationship.

Event Video Link: https://youtu.be/7q16YqGdr4U

A live historic and literary virtual tour with PhD Candidate Andrew Rimby! See the Cedarmere House & Estate, Nassau County Museum of Art, & Historic Roslyn. “To Bryant, the Poet of Nature”: Walt Whitman and William Cullen Bryant’s Transcendental Relationship.

In 1847, Whitman coined Bryant “one of the best poets in the world” while writing for the Brooklyn Eagle. And, a few years before expressing his praise for Bryant’s poetic talent, Whitman had written a poem in dedication to Bryant’s Romantic and Naturalist themes. Although a role model to Whitman, their approach to the poetic genres of Romanticism, Naturalism, and Transcendentalism differed as did their approach to abolitionism. As we virtually journey, in historic Roslyn, from Bryant’s Cedarmere to the Bryant Library, we’ll ask how to approach these two influential Long Island poets in 2021? And, what happens when you look at their poetry through an ecopoetic lens? The tour will conclude with Whitman’s poetry influencing Roslyn’s Gilded Age future, and why Edith Wharton turns to his homoerotic poetics for her own writing.

A master class and workshop with Forrest Gander, WWBA 2021 Poet-in-Residence.

Event Video Link: https://youtu.be/_AffMX7qCp4

This event was made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the governor’s office and the New York State Legislature and is administered by The Huntington Arts Council, Inc.

Celebrating Richard Bronson, MD, Suffolk County’s 2021-2023 Poet Laureate with music by Linda Sussman and a poetry reading.

Event Video Link:  https://youtu.be/_eiN-Lc5ags

The committee of former Poet Laureates of Suffolk County, Long Island Poetry Collective, and the Suffolk County Legislature announcing the incoming Poet Laureate and presenting an award to Richard Bronson, MD. WWBA Writer-in-Residence George Wallace, the first Suffolk County Poet Laureate, introduces our new Suffolk County Poet Laureate. The ceremony includes live music performed by Long Island-based Singer-Songwriter Linda Sussman.

RICHARD BRONSON, MD is on the Faculty of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care & Bioethics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. He has received the Poem of the Year Award of the American College of Physicians and is the author of Search for Oz (2006), Silent Music (2009), Passage: Poems New & Selected (2014), and Wearing Masks (2015). He is on the Board of Trustees of Walt Whitman Birthplace Association and of Long Island Poetry Collective (LIPC) and facilitates poetry workshops with a group of LIPC members.

LINDA SUSSMAN is a Long Island, NY-based recording artist whose music blurs the lines of contemporary folk and blues. Linda’s music has received international airplay–from New York stations WFUV and WUSB to other parts of the US, UK, Europe, Israel and elsewhere. Just 6 weeks after its February 2021 release, Linda’s latest album, titled These Walls, ranked #1 on the Roots Music Report’s “Top 50 Alternative Folk Album Chart” (wk 4/3/21). Pre-pandemic, Linda was touring the East Coast as a solo artist and at times performing with her studio musicians under the name the Linda Sussman Collective, including gigs at NYC’s iconic The Bitter End. Linda’s music is available on all streaming sites; much more on her website at: lindasussman.com

Every Hour, Every Atom, a Pride Month discussion about Whitman’s notebooks.

Event Video Link:  https://youtu.be/S-6nqjbkXh4

WWBA is delighted to celebrate Pride Month with a panel discussion about Walt Whitman’s notebooks. This program highlights two different kinds of collaborative projects involving transcriptions: the scholarly edition Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman’s Early Notebooks & Fragments (University of Iowa, 2020) edited by professors Zachary Turpin, PhD and Matt Miller, PhD; and Whitman Diaries & Notebooks, the new “By the People” crowdsourcing transcription project (launching May 26, 2021), for which Abigail Shelton serves as a community manager. Barbara Bair, PhD, Curator of Walt Whitman manuscript collections at the Library of Congress, will moderate this exciting discussion exploring Whitman’s personal notebooks.

WWBA invites you on an international journey for Walt Whitman’s 202nd Birthday Celebration! Watch “Leaves of Grass” video readings and view Whitman-inspired artwork. Please see the links mentioned in this video below. Thank you to everyone that contributed to this celebration.

Event Video Link: https://youtu.be/57UK9ePkh-0

Virtual “meet the artists” reception for YAWP, WWBA’s group art exhibition on view in person through January 7, 2022.

An exhibition featuring local artists’ interpretations of Section 52 from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”. “The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world…” Each artist will be included in a temporary exhibit in our Gathering House that will be on view during tours of the Birthplace. Due to the need for social distancing, the in-person exhibit is currently postponed; however we are very excited to present all of the artwork that was submitted online in video format.

Event Video Link:  https://youtu.be/BnBKaOp6u84

Walking With Whitman featuring poets Rommi Smith and Deborah Hauser with musician Rori Kelly to continue our 11th year in this signature series.

Event Video Link: https://youtu.be/_uuTCrPbF4M

WWBA is delighted to present the 11th season of Walking With Whitman, hosted by Writer-in-Residence George Wallace.(All links mentioned in this video are below). The signature series continues to bring the most intriguing figures in contemporary literature on the national scene paired with local poets on WWBA’s Virtual Stage. May’s featured readers are British poet Rommi Smith and local poet Deborah Hauser. Live performance by Long Island Singer-Songwriter Rorie Kelly!

Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. Winner of numerous prestigious residencies and commissions for institutions ranging from the British Council to the BBC, she is a three-time BBC writer-in-residence. She is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer in Residence and inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Keats’ House, Hampstead. Her writing is published by Bloodaxe, New York University Press, Seren, Shoestring Press, Route, Oberon Modern Plays, and Peepal Tree Press, among others. In 2018, she founded her own production company and small press: 125th& Midnight. Rommi is finalising her practice-led PhD. A Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY), she has presented her work at institutions including: The Segal Theater, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture and City College New York. Her academic writing was first published by New York University Press as part of the groundbreaking book Imagining Queer Methods (2019).

Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and SWWIM. She has taught at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry.

Rorie Kelly makes ladybeast music. Her life’s mission is to create music that inspires others to love themselves fiercely and become their own heroes. Rorie’s empowerment anthem “If You Teach a Bird to Sing” led her to perform at the Obama White House and earned her a top 10 staff pick from WFUV’s John Platt. Rorie performs weekly on her livestream Monday Night Muses, and you can tune in every Monday night from 7pm-9pm ET on her Facebook, Youtube, or Twitch page. Her new album Shadow Work is a big, dark, witchy album about healing wounds and shining a light in the darkness. It can be found on all streaming platforms or purchased on her website – shop.roriekelly.com