2025 NEWS: Our ambitious undertaking to bring Colombari’s WHITMAN ON WALLS! (WoW!) to all 50 states in the USA in celebration of the upcoming 250th anniversary of The Declaration of Independence is in full swing, now led by our Tour Producer & PR/Marketing Director, Cindy Sibilsky. If you'd like to explore bringing WoW! to your city, contact cindy@colombari.org. 

WHITMAN ON WALLS! (WoW!) is a hybrid project juxtaposing film and live performance in response to New York poet Walt Whitman's radical "Song of Myself." Devised by Compagnia de' Colombari Director Karin Coonrod in response to performance cancellations in 2020, Colombari's original production of MORE OR LESS I AM, based on Whitman's iconic poem, was transformed into seven short films featuring 50 performers from around the world.

WoW!  is a touring event that unites communities and their local poets and musicians with Colombari performers on film; a movie screening meets a poetry slam. Each film is followed by responses from local poets from various backgrounds and ages who "talk back to Whitman" in their own words, challenging or quarreling with him, blending cinema and live recitation and expanding the Whitmanic vision of democratic interdependence. In collaboration with institutional partners and living poets across the globe, WoW! activates our communities toward unity and freedom.

To better understand WoW! and its effect on poets and communities, please read this marvelous feature by Kate Abbott, "Contemporary Poets Share Songs of Polyphonic Selves," first published in the Berkshire Eagle, May 3, 2025, now on BTW Berkshires covering Colombari's collaboration with Tupelo Press at The Clark.

Whitman on Walls!  is designed to work in partnership with libraries, museums, community groups, writers groups, theaters, universities, and educators, bringing stakeholders to the table to create opportunities to collaborate, write, read, perform, and hold contextual conversations.

The films include performances by David Patrick Kelly, Juliana Francis Kelly, Michael Potts, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Steven Skybell, Trazana Beverley, Carl Hancock Rux, Christina Robinson, John Douglas Thompson, Peter Gerety, and Linda Powell. The films feature original music composed and performed by Colin Jacobsen (violin), Kyle Sanna (guitar), Eric Jacobsen (cello), and Alex Sopp (flute).

Each poem performed during the first WoW!  tours were included in the WoW! Anthology: Volume 1. This first volume includes poems from poets across the globe who participated in 2022. WoW! poems from poets participating in events in 2023-2024 comprise the WoW! Anthology: Volume 2, debuting April 2025, with future WoW! Anthology volumes to follow. Antholgies will be sold at WoW! events across the USA. To purchase these books, please please write to info@colombari.org.

Whitman on Walls (WoW!) Tour Dates:

November 8, 2025 - Winter Park, FL at Rollins College Mills Lawn & Olin Library

September 20, 2025 - Staten Island, NYC, at Alice Austen House

June 23, 2025 - New Haven, CT, The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

May 3, 2025 - Williamstown, MA, The Clark Art Institute

April 3, 2025 - Manhattan, NYC, WoW! Anthology Vol. 2 Book Launch at The City College of NY 

October 26, 2024 - Queens, NYC, St. John's University

September 25-29, 2024 - Santa Fe, NM, Academy for the Love of Learning

May 5, 2024 - Harlem, NYC, Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park Robert Frederick Smith Center
March 25, 2024 - Stony Brook, NY, SUNY Stonybrook

November 16, 2023 - Buffalo, NY, Calmus Project at Burchfield Penney Art Center

September 29, 2022 - Brooklyn, NYC, Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club

September 22, 2022 - Newburyport, MA, The Custom House 

September 17, 2022 - Toledo, OH, Momentum Festival

September 16, 2022 - Bronx, NYC, Gaelic Park- Manhattan College

August 20, 2022 - Philadelphia, PA, Venice Island Performing Arts Center

August 18, 2022 - Syracuse, NY, Everson Museum

August 5, 2022 - Portland, Maine, Congress Square

June 7, 2022 - London, UK, Conway Hall

May 28, 2022 - Bolton, UK, Bolton Museum Art Gallery