Jacqueline Gens Interview – part 2

August 21, 2018Simon Pettet

Robert Frank – New York City, September 1993 – photo: Allen Ginsberg]

John Shoesmith interviews Jacqueline Gens on Allen Ginsberg’s Photography – continues

JS: Do you have any favourites from the collection?

JG: I loved the portraits from the 1980s. The one of Juanita Lieberman, from the Twelve Trees book, one of the few females he photographed, I think that’s a magnificent one, the stress that’s going on between Peter (Orlovsky, her boyfriend) and Juanita is clearly seen in her face. And then there’s Anne Waldman, Allen’s long-time friend and colleague, the famous Joanne Kyger photo taken … Read More

Jacqueline Gens Interview

August 20, 2018Simon Pettet

[Jacqueline Gens – Photo: Allen Ginsberg]

Long before she began working with Allen Ginsberg in the 1980s, Jacqueline Gens was inspired by the Beat writers. Discovering their work when she was in her teens, she points to Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish” as one that “just rocked my world.” A poet in her own right – she was a director and a founder of the Master of Fine Arts Programme in Poetry at New England College, and for many years worked at the Naropa Institute (now University) in Boulder, Colorado, where she first met Ginsberg – Gens played a crucial … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 353

February 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen, 1988 – Photograph by Brian Graham]

The Toronto photo show, “Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds..,“ that we mentioned last week continues. What we omitted to mention was the accompanying catalog (printed and designed by the legendary Coach House Press). As curator, John Shoesmith writes in the forward – “The accompanying catalog attempts to further the story behind the Ginsberg photographs. It contains the voices of several key individuals who were crucial to the poet’s “second coming” as a photographer, beginning in the mid-1980s; from the person who planted the seed within Ginsberg to … Read More

Friday Round-Up – 306

March 10, 2017Simon Pettet

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 [Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in 1957 – Photograph by Jerry Yulsman]

updated news of the fabled Kerouac-Cassady letter – see here

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Tomorrow, (Saturday March 11) – Jack Kerouac’s 95th Birthday Celebrations in Lowell, Mass,, kick off at 12 o’clock, (12 Noon) in the Pollard Library with a Pollard Library Tour, led by Bill Walsh, followed by “The Unknown Kerouac”, a presentation and discussion by Todd Tietchen and Jean Christophe Cloutier of the most recently published Kerouac volume. Then, in the evening, at Zorba’s Music Hall –  “Happy Birthday Jack!” -“A celebration of Kerouac’s Birthday with The Neverly Brothers (Dave … Read More

Peter Orlovsky Remembered

June 3, 2010admin

[Peter Orlovsky on his 75th birthday – Photograph by Jacqueline Gens]

The many tributes & elegies to Peter starting to pop up, including pretty thorough obits in the New York Times & Washington Post, are so moving that we want to post them all. Not quite sure where to start, so we’ll jump right in with Steve Silberman’s “Impossible Happiness” that he wrote for Shambhala’s blog Shambhala SunSpace, and “Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Remembering Peter Orlovsky” for The Advocate. And when you’re done with those, hop on over to Beyond The Pale, Tom Clark’s blog, for … Read More