NYC Poets Respond To Whitman In a Poetry Slam Meets Movie Screening at St. John's University In Queens

On Saturday, October 26, from 4-7pm, Compagnia de'Colombari’s Whitman on Walls! (WoW!) will come to Queens in collaboration with St. John’s University. The event is an afternoon screening of seven films by Compagnia de' Colombari and original poems by St. John's students and faculty in response to Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" at the D’Angelo Center (Room 206) at St. John's University Campus (8000 Utopia Parkway Queens, NY 11439). The event is FREE and open to the public. RSVP HERE.

Envisioned as a “slam poetry reading meets movie screening,” Whitman on Walls! Queens features 18 poets and two poetry groups, including Stephen Paul Miller, Michelle Cicillini, Kelly Mooney, Peter Vanderberg, Ryan Flaherty, Marquielis Guzman, Seán Griffin, Megan Chapman, Sally Mellina, Dana Livingston, Yasmin Mohamed, Ruhin Talukdar, Steven Alvarez, Tess Patalano, Sabrina Sarwar, Kiara Mapp, Steve Mentz, and Lee Ann Brown.

People call Queens “The world’s borough.” This crowded, chaotic place is home to speakers of more than one hundred sixty different languages. We come together to sing out words for and from this teeming borough, in these languages, from these people. We also recognize the lands and waters of New York City as the Lenapehoking, the Land of the Lenape people, whose ancestral presence we value and seek to learn from. 

The poets of St. John’s University come to Queens from many different regions and continents. They will share their words and poems to speak back to Walt Whitman in his own city. Walt’s dream of multitudes, of being “old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,” still inspires citizens in the twenty-first-century City. But, as King Lear’s middle daughter Regan might say, his words come too short. We want more than what nineteenth-century American literature gives us! What if today, the varieties that Whitman's first song, “My Own Diversity,” were transformed into the living, speaking, rhyming realities of Queens and St. John’s in 2024? What barbaric yawps will we sound over the rooftops of this new and changing world?

In 2020, working with Whitman's iconic poem, Colombari created seven short films with actors and musicians from around the globe, bringing Whitman’s words to life in startling and beautiful new ways. In 2021, Colombari intermixed the films with live responses from local poets and performers to create Whitman on Walls! (aka WoW!). WoW! Queens continues Colombari’s initiative to tour Whitman on Walls! through all 50 states in the USA by 2026, the 250th anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. All poems from WoW! are collected and shared in an anthology. Volume I was published in September 2022, and Volume II will be published in 2025.

Compagnia de' Colombari's 20th Anniversary Season programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), The Eucalyptus Foundation, and support from other funders and donors.

The English Department of St. John's thanks the following organizations for financial support: St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Writing Center, the Honors College, the Collins College of Professional Studies, Writing Across Communities, the Department of Core Studies, and the History Department. We also thank our amazing St. John's poets, who come from all the departments and more!

Website: www.colombari.org Instagram: @compagniadecolombari Facebook: compagniadecolombari

About Compagnia de’ Colombari:

Compagnia de' Colombari is an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places that springs from the vision of director Karin Coonrod. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretations to the written word. It is founded on the twin principles that the magic of great theater can happen anywhere and be accessible to everyone. Compagnia de' Colombari was born in Orvieto, Italy, in 2004, when the company re-imagined medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas. Having revitalized the theater tradition during Orvieto's annual Corpus Christi Festival, Colombari launched a parallel theatrical experience in its New York City home base called Strangers & Other Angels. Since 2008, the company created and performed More Or Less I Am (from Whitman's "Song of Myself"), Everything That Rises Must Converge (from Flannery O'Connor’s short story), The World Is Round Is Round Is Round (based on Gertrude Stein's story); Andras Visky's Giulia; Monteverdi's Orfeo; Karin Coonrod's texts&beheadings/ElizabethR; Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Venice, Italy; WoW! (Whitman on Walls!) a hybrid of the More Or Less I Am films with local active poets reciting their work around the country and worldwide, King Lear (International Festival of Arts & Ideas and La MaMa ETC in 2024), Il Mostro Turchino (The Blue Monster, by Carlo Gozzi), in development in Venice, Italy for a 2026 premiere. www.colombari.org