In the late 1850s, Walt Whitman wrote Calamus: a sequence of 45 poems about camaraderie, friendship, and love among men, which he included in the 1860 edition of his collected poems, Leaves of Grass. He named the sequence after the calamus plant, or sweet flag, a tall flowering reed that grows at the edges of ponds and other wet places.

These beautiful short poems offer a less familiar version of Whitman—more vulnerable and self-critical— and address same-sex relationships in ways well ahead of their time. They pose prophetic questions about the relationship of love to democracy.

The goal of the Calamus Project is to present the poems in an engaging way through films, programs, and this website.

featured films

Here are three of the 45 performances of the Calamus poems by Ujima Company.

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