Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 368

June 1, 2018Simon Pettet

June 3 – this Sunday – is Allen’s birthday. To celebrate the Howl Happening Gallery in New York City has organized once again it’s now-annual event.  This year it features David Amram, Ed Sanders, Hettie Jones, Eileen Myles, Simon Pettet, and Peter Hale (manager of the Ginsberg Estate), amongst others. The event will be hosted and m-c’d   by Ginsberg’s “right hand man“, his long-time secretary, the poet Bob Rosenthal (whose long-awaited memoir, Straight Around Allen, is due out this Fall). There’ll be a film presentation, and an energetic group-reading of “Howl” (“I saw … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 333

September 15, 2017Simon Pettet

Next week in Paris (September 20-22) sees the sixth Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network –  “The Transcultural Beat Generation”  is this year’s focus “(Collaboration. Publication, Translation)”.  The three days are broken down as follows: Wednesday, the 20th – “French Edition(s) and Beat Intellectual Life in Paris” – Thursday, the 21st – “Beat Translation and Collaboration” – Friday the 22nd – “Marginalized Beat Artists”.

Of the specifically Ginsbergian – Thursday-evening (6-7.30) has been given over to a panel on Allen, chaired by Anna Aublet) – (rather unfortunately, it clashes with a panel on William Burroughs (chaired by … Read More

Naropa Summer Writing Program 2017

June 10, 2017Simon Pettet

Starting tomorrow – the 2017 session of the Naropa Summer Writing Program.

Here are all the details. From June 11 to July 1st – “The New Weathers” – Anne Waldman explains: “By The New Weathers, we intend to name the ramifications of climate change wrought in the Anthropocene. The luminous details evidencing these changes abound, and daily the case of inevitably grows. These are urgent days, and a new world is possible––and this world is yet worth struggling for. To face facts with creative and spirited resolve; to see through webs of ignorance and power; to witness and study, … Read More

Eileen Myles

December 29, 2015admin

Eileen Myles, 1978 – Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, 2015 – Photograph by Catherine Opie

Eileen Myles has had quite a year – publication these few months back of, not one but, two new books – I Must Be Living Twice – New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 and the re-publication of her 1994 novel (now so-called, as against “short stories”), Chelsea Girls (both from Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins). The meme was (perhaps) set with this – Rachel Monroe‘s September 21 article in New York magazine – “After 19 Books and A Presidential Bid Eileen Myles Gets Her Due”… Read More

Wednesday June 3 – Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday

June 3, 2015admin

Every year it blossoms. The tree planted in memory of Allen in the back yard at St Mark’s Church – the flowering dogwood, the good old Kousa dogwood. It did it again this year (See previous flowering dogwood here, here and here) HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLEN!  Birthday celebrations tonight and a stellar reading in New York City at Poets House to launch the eagerly-anticipated publication of The Essential Allen Ginsberg. Readings and performances of the poet’s work included in the collection by Bob Rosenthal, Eliot Katz, Steven Taylor, Eileen Myles, Sharon Mesmer, Lee Ann … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round Up -159

January 3, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs – Photograph by Hank O’Neal]

2014 is – in case you didn’t know – the William Burroughs Centennial year (next month, February 5th, he would have turned 100), and, not only on the 5th, but on a variety of occasions, there will be events, arranged by a variety of groups, around the globe. Here in New York City (the Allen Ginsberg Project’s home-base), for instance, there will be city-wide celebrations throughout the month of April. Long before that, however, we’ll be witnessing happenings. Perhaps the biggest so far, organized by Charles Cannon, … Read More