Walking with Whitman: Poetry in Performance featuring Garland Thompson Jr. and Graham Everett

Saturday September 12, 2015

Writing with Whitman: Poetry Workshop with Graham Everett

2:00-4:00 pm

$20.00 per person *this fee includes admission to that night’s evening reading with Garland Thompson Jr. and Graham Everett

Poet, professor, and publisher, Dr. Graham Everett is the founding editor of Street Magazine and Street Press. He has worked as poet-in-residence at New York area schools, prisons, and arts councils from 1974 to 1986. Dr. Everett served as the interim director of the Poetry Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and was a faculty member in the General Studies Program at Adelphi University.

Workshop Description: The participants will consider and invigorate their poems (in a revision process) with a variety of the tensions inherent in Whitman’s poetry. For example, Nature (the primal sanity!) vs. Humanity, and a celebration of the individual vs. an embracing of the masses, All with a concern for developing and engaging one’s audience, especially in response to Whitman’s declaration: “To have great poets, there must be great audiences.”

Walking with Whitman: Poetry in Performance with Garland Thompson, Jr. and Graham Everett

5:00-7:00 pm with “Meet the Poets Reception” to follow

$10.00 per person

Garland Thompson, Jr. is a poet, actor, playwright, producer, director, filmmaker, educator, and former radio host (KRML). He is the 2012 recipient of the Arts Council for Monterey County’s Luminary award, as ​well as being the 2007- 08 Pacific Grove, California Poet Laureate. He’s co-founder, producer, and host of the RUBBER CHICKEN POETRY SLAM & OPEN MIC in Monterey, running weekly on Wednesday nights​ ​and now in it’s 12th year at the East Village Coffee Lounge (eastvillagecoffeelounge.com). He’s been a featured poet at the Austin International Poetry Festival (TX), the Howl Festival (NYC), the​ ​LATINO POETS TOUR (UK/Scotland), and the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, CA. Plus, he’s the author of a one-man show,​ ​SWINGIN’ FROM THE VINE: TALES OF THE JAZZBO BLU, and a collection of poems called, HEY GARLAND, I DIG YOUR TWEED SUIT. He currently works with the Library & Community Services Department of the City of Salinas, California, where he helped create the position of Salinas Poet Laureate. In addition he created the Salinas Youth Poet Laureate Program in partnership with the City of Salinas, Friends of the Salinas Public Library and The Arts Council for Monterey County. He introduced POETRY OUT LOUD, (poetryoutloud.com), a national poetry recitation contest created, and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, that starts in the classroom, and culminates on a stage in Washington D.C. where three talented young people​, chosen from 400,000​ competing high school students, are rewarded for their efforts with college scholarships worth tens of thousand of dollars​, massive amounts of publicity, and opportunities to perform and publish their poetry​. ​In California three of the last 5 state champions have come from Monterey County.

Please call 631-427-5240 ext. 112, email events@waltwhitman.org. or visit waltwhitman.org to register.