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LATEST BEAT  NEWS  Last amended -August 14, 2010

  August 14, Charles Bukowski would've hit 90 years old. Skylight Books in Los Angeles are having a celebratory event to mark the date - see here for more details. http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/birthday-tribute-charles-bukowski

This coming December Charles Olson, who died in 1970, would have been one hundred years old. There are any number of things happening that will mark this date, see this site for news. http://olson100.blogspot.com/

It started out very nicely. Me and M.Ring set off for the Beat Hotel photo exhibition in London's King's Road early in the day. Saturday morning, last day of July. A freshening morning rain shower on the way to the station. Marylebone is such a lovely little station to arrive at. A lot of old character. A quick & expensive taxi ride to the Proud Gallery at 161 King's Road to see Harold Chapman's photos of Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, Norse, Somerville and others who lived in this old and tatty hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. A small gallery, no air conditioning in the growing humidity but wonderful to see these pictures at this size and close up. There wasn't a soul in the gallery, it had opened on July 29 and it runs til the end of August. It surprised me that nobody else was in to see it. Are we all so indifferent and unmoved these days? Had hoped to pick up a catalogue but there wasn't one, all done 'virtually' these days. So there will be no tangible record that this exhibit ever happened in years to come. A shame for Harold Chapman. It is a lovely modest little gallery in a very central location. The £400 + VAT prices for prints were out of my league I'm afraid. A few inexpensive postcard versions might have helped for us riffraff. Guess those with deeper pockets might go for one of these limited signed prints. There were brilliant photos downstairs of legendary 1960s musicians like Hendrix, Clapton, The Stones, Dylan. Taken by various photographers. All going for a lot of money. But terrific images. They don't make musicians like these anymore. The humidity in the gallery got the better of us and we had to move out & along the road to the John Sandos bookshop further along. We walked past later in the day and the gallery was still empty. How sad is that? The Beat Hotel exhibit is well worth your time. Just go on a cooler day. see www.proud.co.uk

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This below is a review of Michael McClure's latest poetry collection Mysteriosos. Taken from The Beat Studies Association. A neat alternative take to the Beat Scene page on the book.

Mysterioso and Other Poems by Michael McClure. NY: New Directions, 2010.

Reviewed by Tom Pynn

Idiots, trying to get out of the threefold world!

Where will you go?

--Lin-Chi (d. 866)

Lin Chi’s comment is directed at those who ignore the phenomenal world of experience in which enlightening practice unfolds and instead seek illusory security and knowledge in words and phrases, tradition, or other cultural artifacts in order to escape from the threefold world of desire, form, and formlessness (Watson 54). For Lin-Chi’s form of Ch’an and Buddhism generally, the phenomenal world offers the opportunity to cease the suffering patterns, seen and unseen, that we create for others and ourselves. It is the ultimate practice space. In keeping with this philosophy, far from indulging the dream of escape from our phenomenal situation, Michael McClure has sought a deepening engagement with the body and all the world’s creatures.

Since his reading of “For the Death of 100 Whales” at the 6 Gallery reading in 1955, McClure has maintained a committed stance toward this threefold world. “My poetry is to make myself conscious,” he has stated, but this doesn’t mean he views his art as a purely expressionistic act. He continues rehearsing Shelley’s dictum that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of their times” and so has aligned himself “with a movement or a thread or a stream or a surge of individuals who are interested in liberation of the body, in the liberation of the imagination and the liberation of consciousness” (McClure 6-7). The above imagery of ACTION is not incidental. McClure’s recovery of embodiment, of linking mind-bodyconsciousness— MEAT—conjoins poetry and biology:

“It’s moving in the direction of recovering the biological self” (10).

“Our unending war against nature is the crisis from which I write,” McClure writes in the “Author’s Introduction” to his latest volume of poems, echoing Mallarmé’s view that poets write from a state of crisis (ix). One aspect of this crisis from which McClure composes is the schizophrenic divide we have created between consciousness and body. Inherited from the Renaissance, this duality now threatens not only our individual and collective sense of self, but also the stability and health of all the planet’s life forms and even the planet itself. Instead of duality, McClure’s poetry has always emphasized interconnections between forms.

In the volume’s opening poem, McClure indicates the complex interplay of light and dark, of good and evil, of which all things are made:

I’M BLACK, BLACK IN MY CORE

THOUGH ONE EYE OF LIGHT

peers inside of me.

The same darkness that is in him, however, is also “[t]he blackness inside a salmon / or a root of peyote” (5). Though the poem ends in a frank statement that all things die, this must not be mistaken for fatalism but should be viewed in context of an overriding theme of the collection, that in order to begin healing the self and world we must first admit that the darkness within us is as real as the urge for light.

“My shoulders are decency and indecency,” McClure observes, “interpenetrating / like wisdom and compassion.” Indeed, one of the striking things about this collection is the overwhelming feeling of love being expressed in a vast majority of the poems. I am even tempted to think of Mysterioso as a volume of love poems.

If this Mysterioso can be considered love poetry, then it’s love poetry of a Beat kind. Love is found not on the heights of Parnassus or in some dreamlike erotic imagery or fantasy, but in the messy realms of desire and form. For instance, in “Mangos and Plastic” the poet contrasts his life with the great Bengali Rishi and poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941):

 

My life

is eagles, and cars,

and mountains,

and plastic trash

that scatters cracked

and smiling faces.

It is love poetry that holds contraries together: “the unimagined gleam” of a life each day filled “with smiles and tears / and kisses” and “life eating life . . . / as we float on a sea / of petroleum” (31, 11). It is in this light that the second section of the book, “GRAHHRS: WAR POEMS GRAHHR POEMS,” contains work that combines imagery of war and ecocide with wedding poems.

It is in the section titled “DEAR BEING,” “a garland of thirty-seven poems,” that the imagery of interpenetration really stands out. McClure explains that these poems emerge out of two main movements: “repeating opening lines of old poems to begin new poems” and his study of Hua-yen Buddhism. A significant school of Chinese Buddhism founded by Fa-tsang (643-712), Hua-yen emphasizes the interconnectedness or inter-being of all things and their dependence upon one another. Furthermore, and this seems to be important for McClure, all things are in harmony with each other. In the case of the disturbing images of cluster bombs falling on grandfathers walking with their grandchildren in Baghdad or helpless soldiers being bulldozed in trenches, it is a difficult lesson to learn. In such a world, “Everything happens at once, in one time: azure eyelids of the lizard blink, mynah birds fly to the roof, and tanks blast children in concrete bunkers. (84)

While “[t]he concords of greed are being delivered in tanks,” McClure can also write,

Dear Being, I am thrilled

to be with you while the auras and zigzags and flashes

spring from us, and into us, and through us.

Where we are there is no greater density

OF RICHES

than the passing experience,

rippling into nowhere.

(101)

That impermanence can yield ecstasy is one of the mysteries of this volume in particular and McClure’s work in general. Yet, this has been characteristic of many of the artists working in post-World War II America. Even in the dark moments of big sur, Kerouac could write optimistically that life is safe and will yet turn into that Golden Eternity in which all things are brought into ecstatic light. McClure’s poetry suggests a slightly different view. Not that everything will work out, but that we fail to see that the Golden Eternity is here and now in “the passing experience, / rippling into nowhere” (101). These poems are intimations of interbeing: buddhavatamsaka.

Most consistently the double image of form and formless, or emptiness and form as the Heart Sutra avers, is developed in the poems that comprise “Double Moiré.” Dedicated to Francis Crick (1916-2004), Nobel Prize winner in medicine in 1962 for co-founding the double helical structure of DNA, these poems alternate between visible and invisible, double patterns that bring together McClure’s principle interests in desire, flesh, consciousness, protein synthesis and the liberation from all form. The intermingling of form and formless can be read in the following sestet:

RAINBOW AGAINST WHITE—PROJECTED ON BLACK

 

or a moon-bow of ivory telling the time

that will come to be tangled in roots of cress

in the brook. This canny voiceless whisper

powers all galaxies as the water strider

skims on the Technicolor pool. (126)

Wonder and delight, energy and melody infuse all of the poems in “Double Moiré.” In another poem, the speaker declares that “[w]hen all is alive everything sings the silence” (112).

It’s easy to hear in these poems the music that is always in the background of McClure’s writing. As in the case of performance, he has and continues to bring out the melodic and rhythmic qualities of his lines by collaborating with musicians such as Ray Manzarek, Terry Riley, and Riders on the Storm, a band founded by Manzarek and Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger. In the current case of “Double Moiré,” if one goes to YouTube and types in “Double Moiré 3rd Movement,” one will find McClure’s performance of these poems and the jazz soundings of George Brook et al. – a delightful experience.

Works Cited

McClure, Michael. Lighting the Corners: On Art, Nature, and the Visionary. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

Watson, Burton. Translator. The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi. NY: Columbia University Press, 1999.



                                                                          

Harold Norse’s 1984 Amsterdam reading Harold Norse Of Course
is finally available on both CD and double vinyl LP.
The CD version is in a handsomely designed and very lightweight ‘digipak.’
The LP has some three dozen photos of Harold at various stages in his long (just under 93 years) life on the inside sleeves.
Previously available on audio cassette, this new release is a joint venture of Unrequited Records (San Francisco) and Ins & Outs Press (Amsterdam). And is being mainly sold and distributed by Unrequited. (Amsterdam residents can buy from Eddie Woods at  metal.dragon@hetnet.nl  - All others, in the EU and elsewhere, should go to the website and order there at
Unrequited Records http://www.unrequitedrecords.com/
And on the Unrequited site, also click Listen to hear four of the 20 tracks. Or click straightaway on http://www.unrequitedrecords.com/Listen.html
 

  West Coast poet Neeli Cherkovski is featured in this journal, (see link below) an article where he reflects on being both a biographer, Bukowski, Ferlinghetti and a poet. His latest work, From the Canyon Outward (www.rlcrow.com) is featured in Beat Scene 62. http://ww.examiner.com/x-4545-SF-Poetry-Examiner~y2010m7d6-Nexus-poet-Neeli-Cherkovski-walks-the-past-into-the-future

German publisher AltaQuito has just released two books of big Beat Generation interest. Michael McClure RAFFELS WOLKE and Philip Lamantia's GEOMETRISCHE HALLUZINATIONEN. They are beautifully published in editions of just 270 numbered copies. Contact the publishers at Ulrideshuser Str.1, 37077 Gottingen, Germany. Telephone 0551-205074 or email harbaum@gmx.de

A Jack Micheline recording on cassette, remember them, is still available from American writer in Amsterdam, Eddie Woods. metal.dragon@hetnet.nl Or write to Eddie Woods, P.O. Box 3759, 1001 AN Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
it going for about 10 euros + postage. (£10 including post to UK)

 David Meltzer's collection will be the 60th in that iconic City Lights Pocket Poets series, the little black and white paperbacks. Probably published late 2010 or early 2011, according to a reliable source.

   Peter Orlovsky died May 30 at approximately 11.30 a.m. I understand he died in a hospice from lung cancer and complications stemming from that. Peter was born in 1933 and was 76. For years he was the companion of Allen Ginsberg. More when I have it. Below is a link to an obituary written for the English daily newspaper The Independent  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/peter-orlovsky-beat-poet-and-life-partner-of-allen-ginsberg-1990004.html

Plus, here is a link to the USA's New York Times obituary. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/arts/03orlovsky.html?ref=obituaries

    Allen Ginsberg has a photographic exhibition at the Smithsonian...see here for a review..

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Allen-Ginsbergs-Beat-Family-Album.html

Michael McClure is reading at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Friday July 2nd at 6pm. And he's doing something there the next day with film maker Colin Still and the showing of 4 Beat type films. One about Frank O'Hara, another about Gary Snyder, and another about Allen Ginsberg, a fourth is a beautiful film about Michael McClure himself. Tickets available now by contacting the Box office on telephone number- 0845 458 1743.

Michael McClure is also reading at the London Review Bookshop in Bury Street on July 8. Here is a link to their site and information about the reading.

http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/product.php?productid=19223&cat=0&page=1

Gary Snyder and novelist Jim Harrison got together for a long hike and you can see them in this trailer for the documentary film Practice of the Wild. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=333498817232

  For news on yet another proposed filming of Jack Kerouac's On The Road go to this site for the lowdown on who is playing who. I'll believe it when I see it. I'm indebted to Beat Scene subscriber Paul Dean for drawing this to my attention. http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/news/sam-garrett-and-kristen-to-hit-the-road-jack-070510

Beat Scene deputy editor Jim Burns has a new poetry collection just out. Streetsinger is published by Shoestring Press. His poems draw on a lifetime's experience of living in the north, the war, jazz, art, socialist politics and history and much more. There is a sharp realism about everything he writes.  www.shoestringpress.co.uk

Lost Steps is a fascinating radio show centred around, I think, London and the diverse history and goings on of the place. Produced in conjunction with Resonance radio, they did an interview with Miles in March, focusing on his new book London Calling. In this near thirty minute interview there is recollection of Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti in London in the mid 1960s and much talk of the 'counter culture.' As always Miles is an engaging talker. Find it at http://www.loststeps.org.uk/Miles.php

A new Spanish language publisher has emerged. They have plans to publish the works of Brion Gysin amongst others - see http://www.libertoseditorial.com/

He vehemently states he is not one of the Beat Generation, he simply published them, yet Lawrence Ferlinghetti is as Beat as they come. He was 91 years old this week. See this silent b/w film footage of him outside his City Lights bookstore in North Beach, San Francisco in, I believe, the late 1950s. Mr Ferlinghetti I salute you. http://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/188468


 DEAD FINGERS TALK - the Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs an event at the IMT Gallery from May 28 until July 18.  IMT is at Unit 2/210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9NQ, England -(It looks like this venue is in the Bethnal Green area of East London, nearest tube Bethnal Green).  Tel 0208-980-5475 email mail@imagemusictext.com

CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S SCARLET: A MEMOIR by Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood is out soon from Sun Dog Press. See www.sundogpress.net for more.

  HAN SHAN, CHAN BUDDHISM AND GARY SNYDER'S ECOPOETIC WAY by Joan Qionglin Tan is recently published by Sussex Academic Press in a big format paperback running to 300 pages. Available in the UK from Gazelle Book Services www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

 

  There is a short recent interview with Gary Snyder at  http://www.milforddailynews.com/entertainment/books/x1669539622/Pulitzer-Prize-winning-poet-Gary-Snyder-comes-to-Acton

  Charles Plymell has a new book out - Eat Not Thy Mind. A nicely produced publication with a wraparound jacket. Published by Glass Eye Books/Ecstatic Peace Library, PO Box 627, Northampton, Massachusetts 01061, USA. Tel 413-586-0706. The publishers have a site at www.yod.com where you can currently pick this up for $8. Or email glasseye@yod.com

  Tim Hunt's, Kerouac’s Crooked Road has been revised and republished by the University of Southern Illinois Press - here is what they have to say about this new edition....

"......one of the first critical works on the legendary Beat writer to analyze his work as serious literary art, placing it in the broader American literary tradition with canonical writers like Herman Melville and Mark Twain. Author Tim Hunt explores Kerouac’s creative process and puts his work in conversation with classic American literature and with critical theory.                                                                                                                                    This edition includes a new preface by the author, which takes a discerning look at the implications of the 2007 publication of the original typewriter scroll version of On the Road for the understanding of Kerouac and his novel. Although some critics see the scroll version of the novel as embodying Kerouac’s true artistic vision and the 1957 Viking edition as a commercialized compromise of that vision, Hunt argues that the two versions should not be viewed as antithetical but rather as discrete perspectives of a writer deeply immersed in writing as both performance and evolving process.           Hunt moves beyond the mythos surrounding the “spontaneous creation” of On the Road, which upholds Kerouac’s reputation as a cultural icon, to look more closely at an innovative writer who wanted to bridge the gap between the luscious, talk-filled world of real life and the sterilized version of that world circumscribed by overly intellectualized, literary texts, through the use of written language driven by effusive passion rather than sober reflection. With close, erudite readings of Kerouac’s major and minor works, from On the Road to Visions of Cody, Hunt draws on Kerouac’s letters, novels, poetry, and experimental drafts to position Kerouac in both historical and literary contexts, emphasizing the influence of writers such as Emerson, Melville, Wolfe, and Hemingway on his provocative work.  see http://www.siupress.com/catalog/CategoryInfo.aspx?cid=152  see also Tim Hunt's own site at www.tahunt.com

13E Note Editions -A French publishing house run by Eric Vieljeux, has a string of novels published. Two recent titles are Barry Gifford's American Falls and Speed by the late William Burroughs Jr. Dan Fante has three titles, Regime Sec (Short Dog), Bons Baisers De La Grosse Barmaid (a collection of poems) and scheduled soon is Fante's Limousines Blanches Et Blondes Platine.  There is also La Derniere Balade De Billy from Burroughs Jr. These are just some of the titles in an impressive lineup from a press that has barely been running a year. Beautifully presented. See www.13enote.com

 

  There is a brand new play on in Manchester during May. BEAT SURRENDER (a play about Jack Kerouac). Set in London in the 1950s, & written by Brian Clarke and Tom Elliott and directed by Helen Parry. It kicks off on May 27 for three nights. (7.30). It is performed at the Royal Northern College of Music. Tickets are £10 or £6 concessions. Telephone 0161-907-5555 or go to their site at www.mcm.ac.uk

Now and then I put down the Beat Generation books and look at something completely different. Jack O'Connell is a reader of Beat Scene but in his spare time he is an American writer with a string of imaginative novels to his name. The Resurrectionist is a recent example. Published by Algonquin Books, the novel is not quite what it appears. Weird and wonderful. Recommended. 

  Roy Kotynek and John Cohassey have a fascinating book which takes in the Beats as well as much more  - see http://americanavantgarde.com/

 

     ABSENCE OF THE HERO is a new collection of essays from Charles Bukowski. Published by City Lights. Go to www.citylights.com for more

  There is a brand new book about Seymour Krim edited by Mark Cohen. Find out about it at this link here http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2010/missing-a-beat.html

 English journalist Stephen Maughan has an article about the latest developments in the Kerouac Estate wrangle in Fine Books magazine. Photo of Kerouac's nephew Paul Blake and his daughter Jan. http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/201001/kerouac-1.phtml

In an age where used bookstores are fast becoming a distant memory, remember the simple pleasure of just browsing through piles of old books, never knowing what surprises might be at the bottom of that box? Well, for a few years now, an ex longtime senior partner at the sadly missed Compendium Bookshop in London's Camden Town has been operating Labyrinth Bookshop in Glastonbury High Street with his partner. I've visited this used bookstore a few times and Glastonbury, for those that have never been, has a charm all of its own.  Nice place. A used bookstore that is fighting the corporate march. See http://www.labyrinthbooks.co.uk/ 

Poet and musician Jim Carroll has died. Go here for the New York Times obituary http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/books/14carroll.html?_r=1

And in England the daily newspaper, The Guardian, has a thoughtful obituary on him - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/22/jim-carroll-obituary

Photographer, film maker and friend to Beat Scene magazine, Chris Felver has a new film out soon. Titled simply Ferlinghetti the movie documentary is 82 minutes in duration and you can find more details on it and other good Felver stuff (including the above film) at http://www.chrisfelver.com/

 

Fascinating material on Bukowski, featuring Neeli Cherkovski and Jack Hirschman. Go to the City Lights bookstore site and enjoy it. http://www.citylightspodcast.com/

    ABSTRACT ALCHEMIST OF FLESH is a newly issued documentary about the life and work of Michael McClure. Filmed by Londoner Colin Still, the documentary includes rarely seen footage of McClure through the years and some previously unpublished photos. There is scarce film footage of Allen Ginsberg and others. Michael McClure is interviewed and reads from many of his books. His musical collaborator Ray Manzarek is also interviewed and the duo are filmed in rehearsal and performance. Others featured include Peter Coyote, McClure's first wife Joanna, musician Terry Riley, poet Joanne Kyger, Amy Evans McClure, (Michael's wife), Dennis Hopper and others. Beautifully filmed. For more go to www.opticnerve.co.uk

   There will be a new book of Elise Cowen poems out soon. The book will be bilingual (English/German). Most of the poems are published for the first time. It is about 220 pages
Price: 16 Euro (plus shipping costs)
ISBN: 978-3-936271-43-0
contact Ralf Zuhlke at Stadtlichter Presse, Wennerstorfer Kirchweg 65, 21279 Wenzendorf, Germany
Tel.: 0 41 65-8 11 69

 

Click here for photos and reports on the fairly recent Naked Lunch at 50 events in Paris. http://brianjonesjoujoukafestival.blogspot.com/2009/07/naked-lunch-50th-anniversary-and.html

 

   Writer Barry Gifford needs no introduction from me. His connection with the Beat Generation is largely based around the biography of Jack Kerouac he did with Lawrence Lee way back and a little book KEROUAC'S TOWN that was published by Creative arts a long time ago. In an extensive interview with Noel King he talks about writing a screenplay for Francis Ford Coppola's proposed movie of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD and much more besides. He is one hell of a writer and seems to operate in a world where days last for weeks. http://jacketmagazine.com/36/iv-gifford-ivb-king.shtml

 

Anne Waldman sees her FIRST BABY POEMS, originally issued in 1982, republished in a lovely way by BlazeVox Books. With beautiful illustrations by George Schneeman. Contact www.blazevox.org &  editor@blazevox.org for more information. Or write to BlazeVox Books, 14 Tremaine Avenue, Kenmore, New York 14217, USA

New William Burroughs film coming in August I understand. http://www.williamsburroughsthemovie.com/

  One for all the Charles Bukowski readers out there.click on the link and enjoy the read. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19870210/PEOPLE/812229998

Just like the buses, nothing for a long time and then three at once. If they do finally track their way through the long and winding road that is film production. ON THE ROAD, HOWL and Lucien Carr will all be on our cinema screens next year. It says here. Of course Lucien Carr featured in the low key film BEAT with Keifer Sutherland and Courtney Love a year or two back. Not a lot of people seem to know that. Almost a straight to DVD type film. Click below for news.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/beat-writers-to-get-the-hollywood-treatment-1704821.html

  Tom Clark has a presence on the internet at http://www.tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/

Henry Denander's lovely Kamini Press present the fourth chapbook in their poetry series BIRD EFFORT by Ronald Baatz - 32 pages of  poems.
First edition of 225 copies out of which 125 are signed by
the poet. Twenty-five special copies contain an original
signed water color & ink painting by Henry Denander
for info http://www.kaminipress.com

For a review of the new Burroughs, Kerouac book AND THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS - go to the English daily newspaper The Independent at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-young-generation-burroughs-and-kerouac--an-unpublished-collaboration-986188.html

 

BURROUGHS LIVE at The Royal Academy of Art 16 December 2008 - 19 January 2009
Burroughs Live is curated by Jose Ferez. By means of video footage, some shown here for the first time, film and artistic collaborations this exhibition aims to establish the presence of Burroughs the man and the influence that Burroughs the artist had and continues to have on several generations of artists. This exhibition will feature films such as Thanksgiving Prayer and Towers Open Fires, collaborations with artists George Condo and Keith Haring and portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe and David Hockney.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season/exhibitions/collision-course/burroughs-live

If one exhibit about William Burroughs wasn't enough, why not get along to the William Burroughs exhibition 'LIFE-FILE' opening at The Riflemaker Gallery at 79 Beak Street, London W1F 9SU Tel o207-439-0000 www.riflemaker.org. The exhibit starts on Monday 15 December. Opening times are Mon-Fri 10-6pm. Saturday 12-6pm.

A new exhibition about Brion Gysin is on at the October Gallery in London beginning on December 11 and running through to February 7 - see http://www.briongysin.com/BG/Calligraffiti_of_Fire.html 

October Gallery's exhibition complements the December Burroughs Live at the Royal Academy of Arts (GSK Contemporary), and Life File, Burroughs' illustrated private files, at Riflemaker. In the '60's, Gysin created the ‘Dreamachine’, which he described as "the only work of art designed to be seen with closed eyes", and a "drugless psychedelic experience". The Dreamachine rotates, and, through a flicker effect, evokes brainwaves which can produce spontaneous waking dreams. Gysin said "...it gives an extended vision of one's own interior capacities, which could also be overwhelming." It was Gysin's point of view that those "interior capacities" are the next art form, superseding painting.
October Gallery was the first in the UK to show Gysin's work with a solo exhibition in 1981, and the first to show Burroughs' works of art in 1988, 1990 and 1992.
Gysin had a lifelong fascination with the juncture of word and image, and Calligraffiti of Fire (1985) is a culmination of a long series of his works inspired by hieroglyphics and calligraphy. He studied Japanese and Arabic calligraphy, and evolved his own style of word/image glyphs, supple as flames or tendrils of smoke. Calligraffiti of Fire was inspired by a makimono, a Japanese scroll, of fire in bamboo that, as a young man, he had seen at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
The New Museum in New York is currently planning a Gysin retrospective. Gysin's works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Boston Fine Arts Gallery, Massachusetts USA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Fonds National d'Art Contemporaine, Musé´e d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and numerous private collections. Thames and Hudson produced Brion Gysin: Tuning into the Multimedia Age, edited by José Férez Kuri.
‘Brion Gysin: Calligraffiti of Fire’ is curated by Kathelin Gray, and produced in collaboration with The Academy of Everything is Possible.

 

An exhibition of On The Road covers is being held in the USA at the moment. Alongside Jack Kerouac's original scroll, which you can see in the foreground above. I'm pleased to say that the current issue of Beat Scene is featured in the exhibit, you can see (just) the current front cover to the right of the image. Thank you Gregory Weiss, Horst Spandler and Jed Birmingham for making this possible. The exhibition is being held at Columbia College in Chicago. There is a link to their site below.

http://www.colum.edu/Administrative_offices/Provost/Beats/ON_THE_ROAD_with_Jack_Kerouac.php

 

  Beat Scene recently covered Deborah Baker's totally absorbing A BLUE HAND: THE BEATS IN INDIA - check here for more on that book http://www.deborahbaker.net/

For the lowdown on a new USA film that features the art of Wallace Berman and the Ferus Gallery - go to http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/coolschool/

If, like me, you have long given up hope of ON THE ROAD being filmed, you might want to read a recent article in the English daily newspaper THE INDEPENDENT - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/the-long-and-grinding-story-of-on-the-road-926664.html

Ahead of a sizeable article about the Ted Berrigan interview with Jack Kerouac for The Paris Review in 1968, which will feature in the number 20 issue of Transit Magazine -  I'd like to point you in the direction of an interview with Aram Saroyan on KCRW radio dating from 1994. In this thirty minute interview Saroyan talks about his friend Berrigan and in particular the then new COLLECTED POEMS OF TED BERRIGAN (Penguin). A fascinating interview and a real pleasure to listen to.. http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw940815aram_saroyan

See this extended article on Philip Whalen at an interesting NYC literary site http://www.tribes.org/web/2008/08/06/philip-whalen-the-buddhist-charles-olson-by-tom-savage/

A new film by Nic Saunders, CURSES AND SERMONS, based on a poem by Michael McClure, will soon be upon us. Go to www.14167films.com

Donald Miller has a thoughtful Beat Generation hued site at http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller11.html

“Naked Lunch@50” Symposium, Paris, July 2009

 

From 1st to 3rd July 2009, the University of London Institute in Paris is hosting a three-day symposium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of William Burroughs’ landmark publication of Naked Lunch.

 Proposals are invited in a range of formats: from short papers (15 minutes) to longer talks (30 minutes), from multi-media presentations to panel discussions and open mic debates. In English and in French, we are looking for original and innovative contributions from scholars and Burroughsians under the headings: The Untold Naked Lunch / A Post-Colonial Lunch / Naked Paris / Naked Lunch Now.

All Symposium sessions, which will run in parallel with one another and with other events including film-screenings, exhibitions, and readings, will take place at the University of London Institute in Paris, 1st to 3rd July 2009.

Proposals need to be received by 30th October 2008, sent to Prof. Oliver Harris: o.c.g.harris@ams.keele.ac.uk

For those wishing to participate or attend, further information about the Symposium and about all other anniversary events is posted on the

website, where the Symposium poster can also be downloaded.

see www.nakedlunch.org

 

 

A pretty new site centring around Hunter S. Thompson is to be found at  - take a look http://hstbooks.wordpress.com/   - Hunter fan Martin Flynn has an enthusiastic and attractive site, which incorporates many other Beat associated writers. There is a link here, also, to some words he has to say about The Beat Scene Press Pocket Book series. http://hstbooks.wordpress.com/books/

See the English newspaper THE GUARDIAN for this article on Gary Snyder

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/05/voice_of_the_wild.html

Have a look at this article from the New York Times of the past week. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Donadio-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In the past couple of months David Meltzer suffered a serious fall and was in hospital. I hear he is recovering. Knowledgeable observers of the beat scene will know David's work through the years. We wish David well and a speedy recovery. Go to http://www.meltzerville.com/ to find out more about him.

 

                                                    

Major new Kerouac exhibit on until March at the New York Public Library - see http://www.nypl.org/news/kerouac.cfm

An article by Walter Salles, who, it is reported, is working on a film adaptation of ON THE ROAD.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/magazine/11roadtrip-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

For news on a very new film NEAL CASSADY, directed by Noah Buschel, go to http://www.woodstockfilmfestival.com/festival2005/details.php?id=17904  

  Have a read here and see a thoughtful review in the English daily newspaper THE GUARDIAN by AM. Homes of the new UK paperback edition of Jack Kerouac's recently published play BEAT GENERATION. I'm relieved Homes hasn't fallen for the myth of the 'lost play.' The reality is Jack Kerouac dearly wanted the play to be produced and also published. Nobody was interested and he put it away, deflated by the rejection. The play was never lost. See  http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2103960,00.html

 

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Click on the link below to download a 30-min programme celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Kerouac's "On the Road."  With Carolyn Cassady, Al Hinkle, Joyce Johnson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gore Vidal, Michael McClure, and others:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f41nbe

We carried news of the Michael McClure play THE BEARD www.thebeardplay.com - in 2006 and director Nic Saunders has kindly allowed us to show some photos from the run in July/August of 2006. That's Nic just below with Michael.

Photos above right, director Nic Saunders with playwright Michael McClure outside the Old Red Lion Theatre in London. Bottom left...THE BEARD, a scene being filmed by Colin Still. Right, Billy The Kid (Christopher Daley) and Jean Harlow (Victoria Yeates) in a scene from the play. All photos copyright Nic Saunders.

above, Michael McClure at a book signing in London during his visit to London in July 2006. Photo by Nic Saunders, director of Michael's play THE BEARD. photo copyright Nic Saunders

 

Above a photo of Gary Snyder and Anne Waldman that Anne sent in recently. It was taken at Naropa in Colorado at the school that Anne co-founded with Allen Ginsberg in the 1970s. The photo was taken in 1994.

BEAT SCENE subscriber Giuseppe Moretti has sent in this photograph of Gary Snyder in Italy in September 2005. He was there for readings in Rome and Florence. The photo is taken up in the Dolomites.

If anyone is interested there is an interview with yours truly at www.dogmatika.com where I talk about Beat Scene magazine. Throughout the interview there are many informative links to the people mentioned. An excellent site regardless of my inclusion. 

Check out Dan Fante's own site www.danfante.net the Beat Scene Press in collaboration with Sean Lynch's Ten Point Press, has published Dan Fante's SUPERMARKET in a limited edition of just 100 numbered and signed copies.

Have a look at a fairly new internet site run by the Cassady family, all about Neal Cassady at www.nealcassadyestate.com lots of really personal entries.

There is a wonderful article/interview with photographer Gordon Ball on John Tranter's excellent Jacket site. Photos of Huncke, Ginsberg, Corso and others. Go to www.jacketmagazine.com/33/index.shtml

  

  A film about the late West Coast poet Jack Micheline is in the pipeline. The film is a long running project by Jesse Block. Originally commissioned and started when Jack was alive. It has turned into a full-length documentary on him. Hopefully it will have been completed by end of the year. Find out more about Jack Micheline at www.jack-micheline.com

Thank you David Knowles for reminding me to include this link to the Naropa Archives of Beat Recordings at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado. They are in the never ending process of transferring the cassette tapes onto discs to better preserve them. People like Gregory Corso, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Ken Kesey and many others. You might know about this already, but just in case – some interesting audio here: http://www.archive.org/details/naropa

Check out The Jack and Stella Kerouac Center For American Studies in Lowell at http://www.uml.edu/college/arts_sciences/kerouac_center/default.html the center is at 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854, USA. Tel 978-934-4195

 

  POLIS IS THIS: CHARLES OLSON AND THE PERSISTENCE OF PLACE is a new film by Henry Ferrini. You might recall that wonderful film he made about Jack Kerouac? See information about this new film regarding Charles Olson at http://www.polisisthis.com/Polis/Home.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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