Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 295

December 9, 2016Simon Pettet

howl-and-kaddish

screenshot-2016-12-06-15-37-05

[Two early French editions from 10/18, Editions Christian Bourgois]

 

The European Beat Studies Network’s 2017 Annual Conference, the sixth, (this past year (2016), it was held in Manchester, England), will have a decidedly Francophile bent this coming year – “Paris Interzone – The Transcultural Beat Generation (Collaboration, Edition, Translation)”.

From the announcement by the conference organizers:

“This year’s conference will honor and address the key role that the French capital and Francophone cultures have played in the transculturalism of the Beats, by welcoming submissions in both French and English and holding a plenary session on language barriers and … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 294

December 2, 2016Simon Pettet

Jean-Jacques Lebel, co-curator of the ZKM Beat Generation show, giving an inaugural speech, following the ZKM’s Director Peter Weibel, in Karlsruhe on November 25 2016.

burroughs-danger

William S Burroughs – from Danger Series‘ – Portrait of William S Burroughs in front of the Théâtre Odeon – Brion Gysin (Naked Lunch series, Paris October, 1959

Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso – video-trailer for the Beat Generation at ZKM, Karlsruhe, November 2016

screenshot-2016-11-29-12-21-08

Jack Kerouac – still from video on show at Beat Generation at ZKM (Karlsruhe) – see above

Beat Generation at ZKM – Opening last weekend in Karlsruhe, Germany – … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 282

August 26, 2016admin

[Allen Ginsberg working late]

[Allen Ginsberg’s Desk – Drawing by Allen Ginsberg]

The second-part of an in-depth interview with Michael Horowitz, Timothy Leary’s longtime archivist, recently appeared. The first (posted back in November 2015) can be seen here. The second, brings Allen in to the picture (Lisa Rein, the Archives digital librarian, is the interviewer):

LR: What was the dynamic between Ginsberg and Leary? MH: The synergy between them was powerful. There’s a book devoted to their psychedelic partnership, White Hand Society. It went back to the Harvard period when Allen and Peter were … Read More

Man Ray (1890-1976)

December 7, 2015admin

 [Man Ray and Allen Ginsberg at the English Bookshop, Paris, 1961 – Photograph by Loomis Dean]

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky, 1890-1976) and Allen Ginsberg  in conversation (Peter Orlovsky) there in the background. The date, we’re surmising, is, on the second of Allen’s sustained Paris visits, in 1961. The location – the cellar of the English Bookshop (42 rue de Seine, Paris), where, as Jean Jacques Lebel, organizer, co-ordinator and provocateur,  points out, “we held many a bilingual reading in the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties.” Here’s Jean Paul Fargier‘s 1998 tv documentary film on Man Ray – … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 243

November 6, 2015admin

 

          [Allen Ginsberg’s 437 East 12th Street, New York City kitchen (looking out on the corridor/hallway), November 1987 – Photograph by Gordon Ball – (images of Rimbaud, Trungpa and Whitman visible on the wall)] 

 

We’re a little behind “Our Allen” with this stuff, but wanted to share with you a few more of Randy Roark‘s treasure-trove of old Allen pages

 

His observations on these two:  “By popular demand, this is the other poem I photocopied from Allen’s notebooks so he could take it on an airplane and decode the words I couldn’t decipher. It was … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 65 (1965 London Albert Hall Poetry Incarnation)

June 12, 2014admin

[Ernst Jandl (and Michael Horovitz) at the International Poetry Incarnation at The Royal Albert Hall in London, 1965]

AG: There’s a film actually… Student (CC): Wholly Communion. Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s around town AG: In fact, we might try and get (it).. because the (Ernst) Jandl is on it, the Jandl (collaborative) piece is on it. Nineteen sixty-five.. Student (CC): It is.. AG: … (a) poetry reading in (London’s) Albert Hall. Then… Student (CC):  Wholly Communion  – W-H-O-L-L-Y Communion Student:  (There’s another one) AG: Pardon me? Student: They had another one, “Poets Against the Bomb”,  at the

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 152

November 15, 2013admin

Jean Jacques Lebel’s Beat exhibit (extended in Metz) now comes to Budapest, Hungary, to the Ludwig Contemporary Art Museum (it opened just last week, and will run there until January 12). Here‘s a variety of Hungarian artists, in individual videos, extolling the Beat ethos (it’s all in Hungarian, but for those of you who speak Hungarian…) – musician and tv personality, Varga Livius, poet-rapper, Peter Zavada, poets Tibor Babiczky and Karafiath Orsolya, and DJ Erelyi “Superman” Zsolt  (Lebel’s own introduction to his “jungle”, as he calls it (see above), a helpful survey of the show, (advance

… Read More

Scraps & Gleanings – A Sunday Miscellany

November 3, 2013admin

 

It’s the Year of the Ginz! – didn’t you know it? – According to France’s Liberation – “Après l’année Kerouac, en 2012, c’est au tour d’Allen Ginsberg d’être honoré comme symbole d’une jeunesse en rébellion contre les mœurs de l’american dream puritain“. (Following the Year of Kerouac in 2012, it is the turn of Allen Ginsberg to be honored as the symbol of youth in revolt against the manners of the puritanical “American Dream””)  Liberation notes the extension of Jean Jacques Lebel’s multi-media Ginsberg extravaganza at the Pompidou Center in Metz, through to the beginning of next year. Beat movies

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 147

October 11, 2013admin

From Jean-Jacques Lebel and Xavier Villetard’s Beat Generation, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.  Allen: (“Candor ends paranoia”)   “And that is an old tradition that goes back to Whitman, who said that poets of the future should feature candor, frankness ( or “candor” is the word by Whitman) in public to bring that private candor into the public arena, to erase the schizophrenia between the way we really live and the way it’s conducted in public”. Rick Synchev’s extraordinary collection of Beat books and Beat miscellanea was auctioned off yesterday by the PBA Galleries in San Francisco, an On … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 135

July 19, 2013Simon Pettet

[Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) photographed by Alexandr Rodchenko, 1924]

Mayakovsky’s Birthday today. We’ll alert you to some of our earlier Mayakovsky postings – here, here, and here.

Michael Kurcfeld’s video over at the LA Review of Books on the Jean-Jacques Lebel Ginsberg & Beats celebration is well worth perusing. See here.

San Francisco’s Beat Memories, the travelling show of Allen’s photographs is still up (so, if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of the CJM (Contemporary Jewish Museum… need we say more?)

Did we run this review? – one out of of
… Read More