The EBSN (European Beat Studies Network)’s annual Conference is this weekend. This time (for obvious reasons) a virtual one – “Beat Studies Present and Future” is the theme this year.
The complete three-day program can be found here
Too much to list (naturally!) but we might perhaps single out Sunday-afternoon’s panel – (Sunday-morning in America!) – (10-11.30 (EST)) – “Beat Ecocriticism” – Chad Weidner concludes the session with a talk on “The Intuitive Ecological Ether of Allen Ginsberg’s Early Poetry”
– and Roger Bygott speaks in a subsequent session on Ginsberg in England – “Ginsberg at Corn Close”
Oh no, not school-board censorship issues again! – This ( a press-release!) from Wade Wilson, Superintendent of Schools at Weiser School District No.143, Weiser, Idaho:
“It was brought to the attention of administration at WHS, on October 1st 2021, that a portion of the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg was presented to students in a Creative Writing class…. The poem was not, and would not have been, approved for use in the Weiser school district.”
Yes, that’s Guillaume Apollinaire‘s face on the cover of Kramer‘s new Shimmy Disc release (due out next month) Words & Music Book One, a poetry-and-music album, inspired by the old Dial-A-Poem records of John Giorno and dedicated to the late great Hal Willner
The recording (hopefully the first of several – he’s already at work on the second) features spoken-word pieces by Allen, (“At Apollinaire’s Grave”), Gregory Corso, Terry Southern, and many others, all of them set to ambient music composed by Kramer, music which he has described as “liquid foundations for the words to float upon”. “The music must never come between the listener, and the words. The words come first.”
Here as an example Gregory Corso’s reading of “Army” (recorded in Chicago, in January of 1959) with Kramer’s underlay
Ai Weiwei’s much-anticipated memoir comes out next week. More on that soon.
the music in the corso piece gets in the way