HE is recognised by many as America's greatest poet and Bolton has an enduring fascination with Walt Whitman (1819 -1892).
His close connections with the town and the North of England are a fascinating aspect of the life of ‘the good grey poet’.
On Saturday, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery will be presenting the UK premiere of ‘Whitman on Walls!’, a British-American collaboration that will launch a series of seven short films with over 50 global actors and 40 local Bolton performers
In 2020, Karin Coonrod, theatre director, writer and lecturer at Yale School of drama, devised “Whitman on Walls!” (WoW!), a new hybrid event bringing together living poets and film, described as a drive-in movie meets poetry slam.
Following performance cancellations caused by the Covid pandemic, Coonrod and Compagnia de' Colombari, the theatre company she founded in 2004, turned her original stage production of Whitman’s poem More Or Less I Am into seven short films.
Lovers of author, Walt Whitman, at Barrow Bridge, Bolton, during poetry reading and walk..Images by Steve Holt, Bolton News, Saturday May 30 2015..
Towards the end of his life, the poet developed a close friendship with a group of admirers in Bolton who became known as the Bolton Whitman Fellowship,The Whitmanites.
A birthday greeting sent by one of the group, J.W Wallace, developed into a regular transatlantic written correspondence between the poet and the Whitmanites. They celebrated his birthday every year on May 31 – a tradition that is continued in the town to this day – and some of them visited him at his home in New Jersey.
Lovers of author, Walt Whitman, at Barrow Bridge, Bolton, during poetry reading and walk. Flo Wood reading book..Images by Steve Holt, Bolton News, Saturday May 30 2015..
Seven plaques featuring lines from Whitman’s works can be found across Bolton, Adlington and Rivington.
Recorded over three weeks, with over 50 performers from all over the world, the seven films featured in Whitman on Walls! embody Whitman's words.
As the work tours across the world, each film will be followed by a local poet who stands and "talks back to Whitman" in their own words, challenging or quarrelling with him, thus weaving together film and live recitation.
Register for the free event via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wow-whitman-on-walls-tickets-342627186137
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