Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 58

first reported on this back in November (and again, a couple of weeks back), but now it’s official, Daniel Radcliffe will play the part of Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings (which begins filming on the Columbia campus this coming March). The source is casting director, Laura Rosenthal, in the Hollywood Reporter. Radcliffe himself has begun, hesitantly, speaking up. His “defence” (of taking on the role) was reported by the BBC. To MTV, a couple of days later (and, prior to Rosenthal’s announcement) he was (as they noted), necessarily, “cagey” – but clear – “It’s one of the things that’s on the table, absolutely. It would be [will be] amazing and I’m very very enthused for that script and that young director…It’s an independent film, it’s welcome to the world of independent film – from one day to the next it could happen or not happen. Until I’m there on the set, I’m not going to say anything about it”

Like we say, principal photography for the film starts early March.

Poetry Out Loud,the (US) national (high-school) poetry-reciting competition (we’ve reported on this too before). It’s not until May 13, that there’s the national championships (held in the capital, in Washington DC) but.. Leah DeWitt of Derryfield, New Hampshire? – reciting “A Supermarket in California”‘? – courage and conviction – she’s gonna be a hard one to beat.

Sad news to report, the passing of, to quote Harold Norse (in his Memoirs of a Bastard Angel), “the best German translator of the Beats and raw-meat writers”, Carl Weissner. He died on Tuesday, in Mannheim, aged 71. The notice (in the Mannheimer Morgen (auf Deutsch) is available here {2014 update – no longer available]. Pierre Joris on the PEN American site (and his own site) remembers him (in English). Our friends at Reality Studios have also posted a loving memorial note and host a variety of “Weissneriana” – (for further materials, see here, here and here).

Opening in Istanbul, this very night, a collaboration between Istanbul and Eindhoven museums featuring (amongst other things) a revival of conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg‘s 2004 Ginsberg hommage, The Singing Posters (for more on The Singing Posters see here and here)]
– “When Ruppersberg, who teaches at UCLA, discovered that his students had never heard of “Howl” he conceived The Singing Posters as a way to introduce that important work to a new generation…”

Allen is also featured in “Diggers, Mimes, Angels and Heads”, a “walk-in scrapbook of an exhibition” in New York City.