Professor Karen Karbiener, ‘“Who wishes to walk with me?” Walt Whitman, Poet of Places’
Professor Karen Karbiener,
‘“Who wishes to walk with me?” Walt Whitman, Poet of Places’
Weinrebe Lecture in Collaboration with Arts of Place, University of Birmingham
How does a poet become profoundly connected to places he’s never been or even written about?
Walt Whitman (1819–1892), often celebrated as ‘The Poet of New York’, never travelled beyond North America and spent most of his life in only a few locations. Yet he remains a living presence in Bolton, a former Lancashire mill town, where an annual ‘Whitman Walk’ through the surrounding countryside has taken place, with occasional interruptions, since 1887.
This unlikely connection began in the 1880s with the Eagle Street College, a group of Bolton readers—clerks, professionals, and workers—who gathered to read and discuss Leaves of Grass. The group corresponded with Whitman in Camden, New Jersey, sent him birthday greetings, and helped circulate his work in Britain, interpreting his poetry as a powerful articulation of democracy, equality, and social transformation.
In this lecture, Whitman scholar Professor Karen Karbiener (NYU) will offer Whitman as a representative, portable poet of place. She asks: how does this designation add complexity—and interest—to the telling of his life story?
Speaker Details:
Professor Karen Karbiener is an internationally recognised Whitman scholar and a Distinguished Teaching Award-winning professor at New York University. She has published widely and curated several exhibitions on the poet; she is also president of the Walt Whitman Initiative, a non-profit organisation serving as an organising centre for cultural activism and poetry-related events. Karen is currently at work on American Kosmos: The Lives, Loves, and Worlds of Walt Whitman (Harper Collins, 2027), the first full-length biography of the poet in over 25 years.
About ‘Arts of Place’:
The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing has been a long-term collaborator with Arts of Place. Arts of Place is a research forum that promotes work on the cultural histories of landscape, locality and environment. Based in the College of Arts and Law at the University of Birmingham, they aim to foster rich understandings of places past and present.
Further Details and Contacts:
After the event, please join Arts of Place for a complimentary wine reception.
This event is free and open to all. Delivering our lectures costs the Oxford Centre of Life-Writing around £20 per attendee. If you are able, please consider making a voluntary donation of £5, £10, £20, or more to help us cover these costs and keep our events accessible to all. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Registration is recommended for in-person attendance. Registration will close at 15:45 on 02/06/2026.
The event will be recorded and made available on the Arts of Place and OCLW websites soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.
Queries regarding this event should be addressed to Professor Alexandra Harris.
Location: The Arts Building is R16 in the Red Zone shown on this campus map. Regular trains from Birmingham New Street stop at University Station (10-minutes’ walk from the venue). You are warmly invited to explore the campus if you have time. You’ll find a park-like space in the ‘Green Heart’ and a range of cafes, including at the Bramall Music Building under the clock tower.
