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Celebrate the “father of free verse” on Father’s Day!
2019 marks the 200th anniversary of poet Walt Whitman’s birth and the Friends of Bon Echo will be celebrating with a weekend of Whitman-inspired activities, culminating in our third annual marathon reading of Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself.Thank you to our event sponsors, Perfect Books Ottawa and Canadian Whitmanites!

Want to be part of the reading? Contact Friends of Bon Echo Park at info@bonechofriends.ca. We’re aiming for the full complement of 52 readers this year so please pass the word to poetry lovers far and wide.

** Please note that the location this year has changed to the amphitheatre to accommodate more audience members! **

“My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.”

These words, etched into Bon Echo’s majestic Mazinaw Rock nearly 100 years ago, were penned by the American poet, who has been hailed as the “bard of democracy” and the “father of free verse.”

Song of Myself, first published in the collection Leaves of Grass in 1855, explores ideas of self, comradeship and the communion between humanity and nature. Although the book met with controversy, it has achieved a worldwide reputation for its literary significance. The Poetry Foundation calls Whitman “a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare.”

The Old Walt memorial is an inscription carved by stone masons into the face of Mazinaw Rock in 1919. It was commissioned by Flora MacDonald Denison, then owner of the extensive property that is now Bon Echo Provincial Park. Denison was a businesswoman, journalist, suffragette and devotee of Whitman’s “democratic ideals.”

For more information please contact info@bonechofriends.ca or see https://www.facebook.com/events/380169099209253/.

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