Allen Ginsberg Live in London is a DVD film of Allen Ginsberg reading his poetry, singing songs and performing a Tibetan meditation live on stage[1] in London on Thursday 19 October 1995, at Megatripolis club-night at Heaven nightclub, London.
Filmed and edited by Steve Teers, of Diva Pictures, the film was recorded as part of an archive record for 'megatripolis', the underground psychedelic club-night which ran at Heaven nightclub from 1993 to 1996. The DVD sees Ginsberg reading a selection of his work from the 1970s White Shroud Poems era to 80's Cosmopolitan Greetings and 90's new and unpublished poems. Ginsberg was on stage for almost an hour, performing under theatrical lighting in front of about 1000 people. Dressed in blue shirt, red braces and slacks, Ginsberg was reading on stage at a single microphone with assistance from poet Tom Pickard for the duration of the performance, also occasionally playing harmonium. He was initially introduced by Lee Harris who had also booked him for the event. Ginsberg performed William Blake[1] accompanying himself on the harmonium as a singalong finale.
This was Ginsberg's last public stage appearance in the United Kingdom.[2]
The film premiered in Covent Garden, London in June 2005, and was later released on DVD, officially released with the permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd.
The film has been shown at numerous arts festivals. It was shown at a 50th anniversary celebration of "Howl", Ginsberg's iconic protest poem on 1 November 2006 in Bloomsbury, London, where live readings from Adrian Mitchell, Michael Horovitz and Aidan Dun also took place along with a screening of Wholly Communion, Peter Whitehead's famous film of the 1965 Royal Albert Hall poet meet.
The DVD film was released initially through major stores and remains available on its website. It is an archive film and thus reflects the sound and picture quality of archive film footage.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon.
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. It covers a variety of styles and genres.
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was one of the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.
Anne Waldman is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outriders Poetry Project experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat Generation poets.
The London Astoria was a music venue at 157 Charing Cross Road, in London, England, that operated from 1976 to 2009.
The Liverpool poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry.
Renaldo and Clara is a 1978 American film directed by Bob Dylan and starring Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan and Joan Baez. Written by Dylan and Sam Shepard, the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
Heaven is a gay superclub in Charing Cross, London, England. It has played a central role and had a major influence in the development of London's LGBT scene for over 40 years and is home to long-running gay night G-A-Y. The club is known for Paul Oakenfold's acid house events in the 1980s, the underground nightclub festival Megatripolis, and for being the birthplace of ambient house.
Megatripolis was an underground London club-night created by Encyclopaedia Psychedelica/Evolution editor and founder of the Zippie movement Fraser Clark, partner Sionaidh Craigen, as well as a great many others. The club combined New Age ideology with Rave culture to create a vibrant, festival-like atmosphere presenting a wide variety of cross-cultural ideas and experiences. Club nights ran regularly on Thursdays from 1992 until 1995, being the focus of much of the Zippie movement. The club and its related activities such as the Sunday club for mothers and children and those interested in a more relaxed sharing of support, also helped to popularise ideas such as cyberculture and the Internet between those years.
Michael W. Horovitz was a German-born British poet, editor, visual artist and translator who was a leading part of the Beat Poetry scene in the UK. In 1959, while still a student, he founded the "trail-blazing" literary periodical New Departures, publishing experimental poetry, including the work of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and many other American and British beat poets. Horovitz read his own work at the 1965 landmark International Poetry Incarnation, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, deemed to have spawned the British underground scene, when an audience of more than 6,000 came to hear readings by the likes of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Poetry in Motion is a 1982 Canadian documentary film directed by Ron Mann featuring contemporary North American poetry and music. Featured are some of the Black Mountain poets, Beats, minimalist poets, and avant-garde poets. It was released in theaters, later being distributed on VHS, LaserDisc, and DVD. An extended CD-ROM version was also released.
William Blake's body of work has influenced countless writers, poets and painters, and his legacy is often apparent in modern popular culture. His artistic endeavours, which included songwriting in addition to writing, etching and painting, often espoused a sexual and imaginative freedom that has made him a uniquely influential figure, especially since the 1960s. After Shakespeare, far more than any other canonical writer, his songs have been set and adapted by popular musicians including U2, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream, Bruce Dickinson and Ulver. Folk musicians, such as M. Ward, have adapted or incorporated portions of his work in their music, and figures such as Bob Dylan, Alasdair Gray and Allen Ginsberg have been influenced by him. The genre of the graphic novel traces its origins to Blake's etched songs and Prophetic Books, as does the genre of fantasy art.
Ins & Outs Press is a small English-language publisher with international connections based in Amsterdam and registered in the Netherlands as a cultural foundation, or stichting. It was started in 1980 by Eddie Woods, Jane Harvey, and Henk van der Does as a natural extension of Ins & Outs magazine, the first three issues of which were produced by Woods and Harvey in 1978. For two years the Press also operated a bookstore, located on the 'quiet fringe of the red-light district,' until Van der Does left the organization to start his own bookshop and Woods converted the ground floor of the six-story building into a gallery and performance space.
Howl is a 2010 American film which explores both the 1955 Six Gallery debut and the 1957 obscenity trial of 20th-century American poet Allen Ginsberg's noted poem "Howl". The film is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco as Ginsberg.
Ron Whitehead is an American poet, author and activist. Whitehead was born on a farm in Kentucky, but traveled to the University of Louisville and Oxford University to pursue his academic interests.
Neil Oram is a British musician, poet, artist, and playwright. He is best known for his 10-play cycle, The Warp, directed by Ken Campbell.
Kill Your Darlings is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Austin Bunn and directed by John Krokidas in his feature film directorial debut. The film had its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, garnering positive first reactions. It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and it had a limited theatrical North American release from October 16, 2013. Kill Your Darlings became available on Blu-ray and DVD in the US on March 18, 2014, and then in the UK on April 21, 2014.
Songs of Innocence and Experience is an album by American beat poet and writer Allen Ginsberg, recorded in 1969. For the recording, Ginsberg sang pieces from 18th-century English poet William Blake's illustrated poetry collection of the same name and set them to a folk-based instrumental idiom, featuring simple melodies and accompaniment performed with a host of jazz musicians. Among the album's contributors were trumpeter Don Cherry, arranger/pianist Bob Dorough, multi-instrumentalist Jon Sholle, drummer Elvin Jones, and Peter Orlovsky – Ginsberg's life-partner and fellow poet – who contributed vocals and helped produce the recording with British underground writer Barry Miles.
"September on Jessore Road" is a poem by American poet and activist Allen Ginsberg, inspired by the plight of the East Bengali refugees from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Ginsberg wrote it after visiting the refugee camps along the Jessore Road in West Bengal in India. The poem documents the sickness and squalor he witnessed there and attacks the United States government's indifference to the humanitarian crisis. It was first published in The New York Times on November 14, 1971. Further to topical songs by George Harrison and Joan Baez, the poem helped ensure that the Bangladesh crisis became a key issue for the youth protest movement around the world.
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