The official LGBTQIA2+ Pride celebration this weekend, the culmination of Pride Month. A look back at some of our previous Pride postings, starting with.. the event that started it all – Stonewall (see our 2011 posting – here – and our posting on the occasion of the 50th all anniversary – here – and our 2018 Stonewall porfolio – here.)
Other news:
Anne Waldman and her deep involvement with music (all forms of music) is the focus of a two-part feature in Simon Warner’s ever-informative Rock and The Beat Generation
First up, an extended interview with poet, Jim Cohn – see here
(Learn more about Jim – here and here)
A second part, a complimentary piece to the first, we are informed, will follow shortly which will be (important scholarship) the first consolidated discography of her work.
Anne, (from her concluding thoughts in the interview):
“The Beat lineage has been a force, always in my life, and I was blessed in this life to know the members well in some cases. The openness, the collaboration, the travels into unknown places, physically & psychically, the friendships, the communicating of whispered transmission… The sounding of all this that travels through the psycho-physical body into the intelligence of the language, the heartbeat, the off-rhythms out into air waves and in public space. It is a ‘body’ poetics. A conglomeration of tendencies to awareness of body speech mind that poets who felt the spiritual enactment of our existence also transmitted to us.”
Don’t miss this in-depth look.
Kazuko Shiriashi, who’s passing we noted last week, at the venerable age of 93, is fondly remembered by several of her many many (world-wide) friends – see here
Nanao Sakaki – Last year, you may recall, was the Nanao Sakaki Centennial – Research student Adam Klein at Stanford University at the University’s Center For East Asian Studies was the recent beneficiary of a Global Perspectives Award for work on the beloved poet. He delineates his research interest here
Artery Editions, publishers of the remarkable Pente – A Book of Woe – (see here) have another remarkable John Wieners item available, a brand new edition of their 2011 Strictly Illegal book (poems by John (selected by Jeremy Reed) and art by Gilbert and George).
“This second edition”, they write, ” is a resource as well as a collection. It features a cross section of Wieners’s poems from the small American poetry magazines in which they first appeared. (It) also includes poems from Wieners’s journal, some letters, and a couple of poems in draft form, showing his working process”. A limited edition (in a print-run of only100 copies)..this book is a must for all Wieners aficionados and a perfect introduction for readers new to his work.” Copies are available direct from the publishers.
Happy to be saluting John Wieners on Pride month – and always
Happy to be saluting you all on Pride month – Have a great weekend!