Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman This address was given at Bolton Unitarian Church on 29th May 2011, with David Heap reading the poems. For some reason the very end is missing. It can be viewed by following this link: http://www.bolton-unitarians.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103:walt-whitman-tribute-2011&catid=40:videos&Itemid=131 Last year, around this time, as I was preparing a sermon on Whitman for the Dublin congregation, I came across an obituary in the Guardian [1] for Professor Dennis Freeborn, who had just died aged 85. Coincidentally, it was Dennis who introduced me to Walt Whitman as part of a course he was teaching on American literature. However, my first encounter with Whitman wasn’t very fruitful. Determined to wade my way through Dennis’s reading list before the course began in the autumn, I’d borrowed a copy of Leaves of Grass from Pontefract public library in the summer of 1964, but I didn’t get past the first ten pages. It j