Past Events

Previous slide
Next slide

Youth Speaks For Social Justice

Youth Speaks for Social Justice, hosted by Suffolk County Teen Poet Laureate, is a spoken-word performance event and competition focused on social justice issues as a fundraiser to help address systemic inequalities. Proceeds from the event will be donated to a charity of the winner’s choosing.

Register to attend or participate:  https://forms.gle/ctNUxJCU81FMeUgd7 

Ella Scarlett O’Connor is Suffolk County’s First Teen Poet Laureate, and has used her position to bring poetry to the residents of Suffolk County through the Avalon Park Young Nature Writers’ workshop, Youth Speaks for Social Justice program, and the Why We Write initiative, each uniquely focused on empowering the youth through writing.  Her mission is to create a community of young poets and activists who are passionate about social justice and community development. For more information, visit https://ellaoconnorsctpl.wixsite.com/mysite

Date: Saturday, June 3, 2023
Start Time: 1:00 pm EST

Cost: $ 10

Celebrate Walt Whitman’s Birthday with Open-Mic Poetry at WWBA

Join us at WWBA on Wednesday, May 31st, 1:oo-3:00PM, for an open-mic poetry afternoon in our outdoor poetry circle to celebrate Walt’s 104th Birthday! We will be live streaming on our YouTube channel @WaltWhitmanBirthplace.

For inclement weather we will be indoors in the Interpretive Center

Date: Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Start Time: 1:00 pm EST

37th Annual Birthday Celebration & Student Poetry Contest Awards Ceremony

Join us on Sunday, May 21, 2023 at 12PM noon, for WWBA’s 37th Annual Birthday Celebration and Student Poetry Contest Awards Ceremony. 2023 WWBA Poet in Residence Kwame Dawes will officiate the ceremony and the Grand Champions will read their poems.

This event will be held rain or shine under the tent on the grand lawn.

Date: Sunday, May 21, 2023
Start Time: 12:00 pm EST

WWBA 2023 Poet in Residence Kwame Dawes Workshop & Reading

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association (WWBA) announces a day of poetry featuring our 2023 Poet in Residence, Kwame Dawes, on Saturday, May 20, 2023. Kwame will facilitate a three-hour Master Class in poetry writing from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm and a one-hour poetry reading from 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site, located at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station, NY, 11746. The 2023 annual Poet-in-Residence program is proudly sponsored by Bethpage Federal Credit Union.

Workshop (includes reading) – Members $55/Non-members $65

WHITMAN POETRY WORKSHOP – lead by KWAME DAWES

The workshop will be a generative session that will seek to offer some approaches to poetry composition that can hopefully lead to productive writing habits for participants going forward.  The session will involve a multi-step writing exercise that should both generate new work and offer some important lessons about the poetic practice.  Participants should come prepared to write during the workshop.  There will be time reserved at the end for Dawes to answer questions that participants may have about poetry, and the poetry life.

Class Audit – Members $20/Non-members $25

Reading – Members $10/Non-members $15

Purchase tickets >>

 


 

“The poet’s language is vivid and visceral; his courage and honesty blaze a path in poem after poem. This is the music of survival and transcendence. Indeed, the poetry of Kwame Dawes makes the impossible possible.” —Martin Espada

“Kwame Dawes is one of the most important writers of his generation who has built a mighty and lasting body of work…” —Elizabeth Alexander

“Majestic is the word that comes to mind reading the finely wrought poems of Kwame Dawes…a sublime talent is needed to fashion poems of such capacious grace and energy.” —Terrance Hayes

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of Ghana, citing in an interview his “spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music.” Indeed, his book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.

Dawes is an actor, playwright, and producer, an accomplished storyteller, broadcaster, and was the lead singer in Ujamaa, a reggae band. Fifteen of his plays have been produced, and he has acted in, directed, or produced several of these productions himself, most recently One Love at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Commissioned by Talawa, Britian’s leading black theatre company, and inspired by Rogert Mais’ classic novel Brotherman, One Love takes us to the heart of the Jamaican soul, as actors, dancers, singers, life musicians, and a DJ draw on influences such as Bob Marley and Lee “Scratch” Perry to tell this powerful parable of desire and denial. Through the years, Dawes has collaborated with musicians and artists to create a dynamic series of performances based on his poetry that have proven to be some of the most compelling and challenging presentations of poetry being performed today. Wisteria is a multimedia performance with composer Kevin Simmonds, who set the poems from Dawes’ book of the same name, to music. The result is an evening-length performance that explores the life of women who lived through the Jim Crow period in Sumter, South Carolina.

In 2022, Dawes was named the 2022 Brittle Paper Literary Person of the Year. Until July 2011, Dawes was Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts, and founder and executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He was the director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute and is the Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica in May of each year. Dawes is currently the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA Program in Oregon.

In 2009, Dawes won an Emmy for LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive site based on his Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica. It has also won other accolades, including a People’s Voice Webby Award, and was the inspiration for the music/spoken word performance Wisteria & HOPE which premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina. In 2011, Dawes reported on HIV AIDS after the earthquake in Haiti; and his poems, blogs, articles, and documentary work were a key part of the post-earthquake Haiti reporting by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that won the National Press Club Joan Friedenberg Award for Online Journalism.

Of his sixteen collections of poetry, his most recent titles include Nebraska (UNP, 2019), Duppy Conqueror (Copper Canyon, 2013), shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award; Wheels (2011); Back of Mount Peace (2009); Hope’s Hospice (2009); Wisteria, finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize; Impossible Flying (2007); and Gomer’s Song (2007). Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree, 1994) was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in the UK. Other poetry collections include Resisting the Anomie (Goose Lane, 1995); Prophets (Peepal Tree, 1995); Jacko Jacobus, (Peepal Tree, 1996); and Requiem, (Peepal Tree, 1996), a suite of poems inspired by the illustrations of African American artist Tom Feelings in his landmark book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo; and Shook Foil (Peepal Tree, 1998), a collection of reggae-inspired poems. His book, Midland, was awarded the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize by the Ohio University Press (2001). Dawes was a winner of a Pushcart Prize for the best American poetry of 2001 for his long poem, “Inheritance.” His seventeenth collection, City of Bones, was published in 2017 along with two UK releases Vuelo: Poemas, a translation of Gustavo Osorio and Speak from Here to There: Poems written along with John Kinsella. He was also among the 2018 recipients for the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry.

He has published two novels: Bivouac (Akashic Books, 2009 & 2019) and She’s Gone (2007), winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel. In 2007 he released A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative. His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, and Double Take Magazine.

Dawes is also the editor of several anthologies: Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (Northwestern University Press), A Bloom of Stones: A Tri-Lingual Anthology of Haitian Poems After the Earthquake (Peepal Tree Press), New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Boxset (Akashic Books), When the Rewards Can Be So Great: Essays on Writing and the Writing Life (Pacific University Press), Hold Me to an Island: Caribbean Place: An Anthology of Writing, Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poetry from the Carolinas (Hub City, 2011), and Red: Contemporary Black Poetry (Peepal Tree Press, 2010).

He is a regular blogger for the Poetry Foundation; his blogs can be read at www.poetryfoundation.org.

 


 

This program is made possible with funds from Bethpage Federal Credit Union, Claire Friedlander Family Foundation, NY State Parks, Suffolk County, Town of Huntington, and NYS Council on the Arts through Huntington Arts Council.

Date: Saturday, May 20, 2023
Start Time: 1:00 pm EST
$10 - $65

ZOOM Six-Week Reading & Discussion Series: “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War”

Sponsored by Humanities NY – Six Wednesday evenings, 6:00-7:30PM – April 12, 19, 26 & May 3, 10, 17  (2023)  – ZOOM only

Theme – “Land, Liberty & Loss: Echoes of the American Revolution”

Book – Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks

  • One time registration fee:  $10 Registration Fee
  • Watch for the ZOOM link from  events@waltwhitman.org. The link will be sent the first week of the book discussion. The same link will be used for all 6 sessions.
  • You can purchase a copy of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War online, or borrow a copy from your local library.

Sarah Kautz is an archaeologist, historical anthropologist, and preservation planner with nearly 20 years of professional experience. She has worked collaboratively with stakeholders and governments in the United States, Japan, and South Africa to study and preserve heritage sites. Her work seeks to make understandings of the past relevant and useful in our everyday lives.

 


 

Facilitator Sarah Kautz presents Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, a book selection by Humanities NY for their Series “Land, Liberty & Loss: Echoes of the American Revolution.” Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War offers a thought-provoking account of conflict, captivity, resistance, and survival from an Indigenous perspective. Focusing on the experiences of Weetamoo (a female Wampanoag leader) and James Printer (a Nipmuc scholar), this book gives readers fresh insight into commonly heard stories about the period, such as Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, in which both Weetamoo and James Printer appear. In this discussion group, we will consider how legacies of settler colonialism frame American history. We will also explore how Our Beloved Kin opens up new possibilities for re-telling American history.

The Digital Companion website for Our Beloved Kin includes visualizations and additional content developed by the author, including links to Maps (the full color maps created for each chapter), Documents (images of original manuscripts and other documents associated with each chapter) and/or Connections (maps and documents in historical and geographical context, contemporary images of places and other related media).

 


April 12

Introductions, review the reading list, and discuss the major themes of our readings.

Reading:

  • Our Beloved Kin “Introduction: The Absence of Presence”
  • Our Beloved Kin “Prologue: Caskoak, the Place of Peace”

Recommended (videos):

  • We Still Live Here–Âs Nutayuneân, documentary about the revitalization of the Wampanoag language https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3h1myn. As you read Our Beloved Kin, you’ll encounter many Wampanoag words. Does language matter in the stories we tell? Why?
  • Partnership of Historic Bostons lecture: Whose Name, Whose Place? Native Placenames In Southern New England (September 2022) https://historicbostons.org/events/1

 


April 19

Our Beloved Kin–Part 1, The Education of Weetahmoo and James Printer: Exchange, Diplomacy, Dispossession

Reading:

  • Chapter 1: Namumpum, “Our Beloved Kinswoman,” Saunkskwa of Pocasset: Bonds, Acts, Deeds
  • Chapter 2: The Harvard Indian College Scholars and the Algonquian Origins of American Literature
  • Interlude: Nashaway, Nipmuc Country, 1643–1674

 


April 26

Our Beloved Kin–Part 2, No Single Story: Multiple Views on the Emergence of War

Reading:

  • Chapter 3: The Queen’s Right and the Quaker’s Relation
  • Chapter 4: Here Comes the Storm
  • Chapter 5: The Printer’s Revolt: A Narrative of the Captivity of James the Printer

 


May 3

Our Beloved Kin–Part 3, Colonial Containment and Networks of Kinship Expanding the Map of Captivity, Resistance, and Alliance

Reading:

  • Chapter 6: The Roads Leading North: September 1675–January 1676
  • Interlude: “My Children Are Here and I Will Stay” Menimesit, January 1676
  • Chapter 7: The Captive’s Lament: Reinterpreting Rowlandson’s Narrative

Recommended (video):

 


May 10

Our Beloved Kin–Part 4, The Place of Peace and the Ends of War

Reading:

  • Chapter 8: Unbinding the Ends of War
  • Chapter 9: The Northern Front, Beyond Replacement Narratives

 


May 17

At our last meeting, we will have an open discussion of Our Beloved Kin. We will also discuss how Our Beloved Kin inspires retelling Long Island’s colonial history from an Indigenous perspective.

Reading:

Recommended:

 


 

This Series is Sponsored by a Humanities New York Reading and Discussion Grant.

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: Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Start Time: 6:00 pm EST

Mother’s Day Exhibit Opening

Stop in on Wednesday, May 10th, between 1:00 and  4:00PM, for the opening of our new Mother’s Day Exhibit. 

There is no doubt among biographers of Walt Whitman that his mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, had a great influence on him. In fact, about a quarter of the letters he wrote throughout his lifetime were addressed to her. Walt had this to say about his mother:

“How much I owe her! It could not be put on a scale – weighed: it could not even be measured – be even put in the best words: It can only be apprehended through the intuitions. Leaves of Grass is her temperament active in me.”

There were other women, often ignored by past biographers, who nurtured and supported Walt in material or intellectual ways and those who helped to perpetuate his writing after his death. One woman crossed the Atlantic Ocean to offer marriage! The exhibit on Mother’s Day will provide brief introductions to the lives of some of these women and their relationships with the poet.

Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Start Time: 1:00 pm EST

ZOOM Six-Week Reading & Discussion Series: “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War”

Sponsored by Humanities NY – Six Wednesday evenings, 6:00-7:30PM – April 12, 19, 26 & May 3, 10, 17  (2023)  – ZOOM only

Theme – “Land, Liberty & Loss: Echoes of the American Revolution”

Book – Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks

  • One time registration fee:  $10 Registration Fee
  • Watch for the ZOOM link from  events@waltwhitman.org. The link will be sent the first week of the book discussion. The same link will be used for all 6 sessions.
  • You can purchase a copy of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War online, or borrow a copy from your local library.

Sarah Kautz is an archaeologist, historical anthropologist, and preservation planner with nearly 20 years of professional experience. She has worked collaboratively with stakeholders and governments in the United States, Japan, and South Africa to study and preserve heritage sites. Her work seeks to make understandings of the past relevant and useful in our everyday lives. Click here for Sarah Kautz bio.

 


 

Facilitator Sarah Kautz presents Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, a book selection by Humanities NY for their Series “Land, Liberty & Loss: Echoes of the American Revolution.” Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War offers a thought-provoking account of conflict, captivity, resistance, and survival from an Indigenous perspective. Focusing on the experiences of Weetamoo (a female Wampanoag leader) and James Printer (a Nipmuc scholar), this book gives readers fresh insight into commonly heard stories about the period, such as Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, in which both Weetamoo and James Printer appear. In this discussion group, we will consider how legacies of settler colonialism frame American history. We will also explore how Our Beloved Kin opens up new possibilities for re-telling American history.

The Digital Companion website for Our Beloved Kin includes visualizations and additional content developed by the author, including links to Maps (the full color maps created for each chapter), Documents (images of original manuscripts and other documents associated with each chapter) and/or Connections (maps and documents in historical and geographical context, contemporary images of places and other related media).

 


April 12

Introductions, review the reading list, and discuss the major themes of our readings.

Reading:

  • Our Beloved Kin “Introduction: The Absence of Presence”
  • Our Beloved Kin “Prologue: Caskoak, the Place of Peace”

Recommended (videos):

  • We Still Live Here–Âs Nutayuneân, documentary about the revitalization of the Wampanoag language https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3h1myn. As you read Our Beloved Kin, you’ll encounter many Wampanoag words. Does language matter in the stories we tell? Why?
  • Partnership of Historic Bostons lecture: Whose Name, Whose Place? Native Placenames In Southern New England (September 2022) https://historicbostons.org/events/1

 


April 19

Our Beloved Kin–Part 1, The Education of Weetahmoo and James Printer: Exchange, Diplomacy, Dispossession

Reading:

  • Chapter 1: Namumpum, “Our Beloved Kinswoman,” Saunkskwa of Pocasset: Bonds, Acts, Deeds
  • Chapter 2: The Harvard Indian College Scholars and the Algonquian Origins of American Literature
  • Interlude: Nashaway, Nipmuc Country, 1643–1674

 


April 26

Our Beloved Kin–Part 2, No Single Story: Multiple Views on the Emergence of War

Reading:

  • Chapter 3: The Queen’s Right and the Quaker’s Relation
  • Chapter 4: Here Comes the Storm
  • Chapter 5: The Printer’s Revolt: A Narrative of the Captivity of James the Printer

 


May 3

Our Beloved Kin–Part 3, Colonial Containment and Networks of Kinship Expanding the Map of Captivity, Resistance, and Alliance

Reading:

  • Chapter 6: The Roads Leading North: September 1675–January 1676
  • Interlude: “My Children Are Here and I Will Stay” Menimesit, January 1676
  • Chapter 7: The Captive’s Lament: Reinterpreting Rowlandson’s Narrative

Recommended (video):

 


May 10

Our Beloved Kin–Part 4, The Place of Peace and the Ends of War

Reading:

  • Chapter 8: Unbinding the Ends of War
  • Chapter 9: The Northern Front, Beyond Replacement Narratives

 


May 17

At our last meeting, we will have an open discussion of Our Beloved Kin. We will also discuss how Our Beloved Kin inspires retelling Long Island’s colonial history from an Indigenous perspective.

Reading:

Recommended:

 


 

This Series is Sponsored by a Humanities New York Reading and Discussion Grant.

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: Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Start Time: 6:00 pm EST

Diverse Voices in May

On Sunday, May 7, 2023, 1:00PM, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association presents an in-person event, “Diverse Voices in May,” featuring three distinct poetic voices, Indran Amirthanayagam of Washington D.C., Sara Cahill Marron of Long Island, and Nathalie E. Amazan, 2016 WWBA Student Poetry Writing Contest First Place winner. Drawing from their cultural backgrounds and infused with their personal philosophies, these three poets of diverse age, profession, and poetic style will join their voices to reflect the HOPE that each May brings for growth, new life, and change.

Indran Amirthanayagam, who holds a “world record” for publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages, reads from his book “Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant.” Sara Cahill Marron, Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and publisher at Beltway Editions, reads from her book “Call Me Spes.” Natalie E. Amazan, published in anthologies, journals, and other publications, reads from her first published poetry collection, “Still.” 

This is a FREE event!

 


 

Indran Amirthanayagam produced a “world record” in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty two poetry books, including Isleño (R.I.L. Editores)Blue Window (translated by Jennifer Rathbun) (Diálogos Books), Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks.com), The Migrant StatesCoconuts on MarsThe Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com); writes https://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the IFLAC Word Poeta Mundial 2022. In 2021, he won an Emergent Seed grant. His poem “ Free Bird” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he hosts The Poetry Channel https://youtube.com/user/indranam. His new book, Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, has just been published by Dialogos Books. Another collection, Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port), is forthcoming. Indran publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com).

Sara Cahill Marron is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018), Nothing You Build Here, Belongs Here (Kelsay Books 2021), and Call Me Spes (MadHat Press 2022), and is the Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and publisher, with partner in poetry Indran Amirthanayagam, at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com). Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Gravel, Atlas + AliceMeniscus, Cordella, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket, and other anthologies, available at www.saracahillmarron.com.

Nathalie E. Amazan (she/her) is a Haitian American poet and writer from Long Island, New York. Nathalie’s writing strives to move people to recognize the power within our souls to love, be loved, and change to create more peaceful ways of being. When Nathalie was 17, she was a Grand Champion of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Poetry Contest. Since then, she has performed in several venues and has been published in anthologies, journals, and other publications including in the Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Poems by Muslims (Strange Inc. Press), Button Poetry’s 2021 Video Contest, Jabberwocky Undergraduate Literary Journal at UMass Amherst, and the Falastin Magazine by the Palestinian American Community Center (PACC). One can find her writings at natamazan.com andnatamazan.medium.com. One can connect with her by looking up her handle, @natamazan, on all social media platforms.

 


 

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

Date: Sunday, May 7, 2023
Start Time: 1:00 pm EST

I Love My Park Day

Join us at WWBA for New York State I Love My Park Day on Saturday, May 6, 2023, 10AM-3PM, and help clean up a local park. Clean out garden beds, prune shrubs, plant flower and vegetable gardens, and powerwash walkways.

Register at https://www.ptny.org/events/i-love-my-park-day

Volunteers should bring lunch and can bring a trowel and/or rake if you have one.

 

Date: Saturday, May 6, 2023
Start Time: 10:00 am EST