Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 254

Important breaking-news (regarding an earlier posting)  - a Saudi court earlier this week overturned the death-sentence on poet Ashraf Fayadh - but hardly proposing leniency!
His new punishment? - He's sentenced to eight years in prison and eight hundred lashes, (to be carried out on sixteen separate occasions), and must formally renounce his poetry on Saudi state media. 
Needless to say, the campaign for his freedom and full exoneration vigorously continues. 

  

         [William Burroughs Photograph(s) & Allen Ginsberg - Photographs © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg] - 

William Burroughs birthday today (fitting news following such grotesquerie?)  A shout-out today and we'll be celebrating all weekend. 

 & it's Neal Cassady's birthday, incidentally, on Monday.

Here is the poster from last weekend's Cassady Birthday Bash

Wait Till I'm Dead, Allen's new book, was officially released on Tuesday


"New York to San Fran", the longest poem in the book, excerpted in the current Poetry magazine, may be read here

Our posting on another poem, "Amnesiac Thirst For Fame", may be accessed here

(and see here, for excerpts from Rachel Zucker's lively introduction)

All through the month of February, in celebration of its 75th birthday, the CVA (Centro Venezolano Americano) in Caracas (in collaboration with the bookstore, “El Buscón” & under the aegis of actor-producer, Rodolfo Alonzo), will be hosting a series of readings, accompanied by jazz and performance, focusing on the Beat Generation   

Allen Ginsberg in the Netherlands 1983 Revisited - the hommage show featuring the Mondriaan Quartet, Han Buhrs interpretating "Howl", and more (see here)  - plays Rotterdam's Arminius space this coming Thursday

The annual Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Winners Reading in Paterson, New Jersey is tomorrow   

Marcia Resnick's photo show, Punks, Poets and Provocateurs (see also her book of the same name) opened last night in New York at the Howl Happening space. That show will be up till March 2nd. 

[Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by  by Marcia Resnick - from Punks, Poets and Provocateurs] 

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 189

[ Allen Ginsberg - For Martin Mooij - signed and dated hand-written ms., Rotterdam, June 14, 1979]

In Rotterdam, the Tower of Babel/rises unbombed to the rainy sky/today - many tongues babbling/their compleyents under grey clouds/An Indonesian poet come from black jail singing/A poet from East Berlin offering Consonants/A poet or two from Russia, silent in absentia/Poets from America, poisoned by plutonium/Still Chanting Whitmanic vowels/Poets speaking natural French, utter Dutch/caroling in Japanese and Roumanian/Muttering in German, soothsaying in African/syllables -/What human music emerges from the Tower of Babel?/In Mind museum the Babel Tower/sits silent thru centuries of  heaven-breath"  -


[Martin Mooij (1930-2014) with Japanese poet Kazuko Shiraishi]

Allen Ginsberg's international travels. Yesterday we paused briefly to look at his time spent in Warsaw. Today, Rotterdam. The 45th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, an annual global gathering took place once again this past June. Plans are already afoot for the 46th.

Poetry International has, over the years, developed and refashioned itself, to become, not just a single one-time yearly event but a continuing and facilitating presence. The emphasis remains firmly on the international - "What human music emerges from the Tower of Babel?" - poetry from all corners, poetry from all speakers, from around the world.

Allen himself graced its stages twice - in 1973, and, again, in 1979. "Conversation With My Dying Father"  (a section of "Don't Grow Old (from Mind Breaths) performed at the 1979 festival may be read and listened to here.

Here is their Allen Ginsberg page.

Sad to report its founder and guiding spirit, Martin Mooij died, peacefully, in his sleep last month . He was 83



Keeping up the Dutch theme - an early heads-up for a very special event coming up in Tilburg (approximately an hour's drive from Rotterdam) on November 22 -  Allen Ginsberg in Nederland 1983 Revisited - Joep Bremmers and Eddie Woods joined by, (most importantly) the Mondriaan Quartet come together to remember and celebrate Allen's fleeting, but memorable, visit there. Also performing, Han Buhrs (with Jacq and Bert Palincks augmenting the Mondriaan Quartet) performing a version of "Howl". The Quartet will also perform a version of Steven Taylor's beautiful haunting setting of "September On Jessore Road"


[Steven Taylor and Allen Ginsberg in 1983 rehearsing with the Mondriaan Quartet]

Jerome Poynton over at the Herbert Huncke site continues to be posting all sorts of fascinating little curios. Hear "Huncke Reading at SUNY Buffalo in 1966" and read a previously-unpublished letter from Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs to Edie Parker (William Burroughs' wife to Jack Kerouac's wife) - here 

 
[Herbert Huncke and Allen Ginsberg  (courtesy huncketeacompany)

Speaking of Kerouac, The Kerouac Project   have prepared an interesting and instructive little video about "Jack Kerouac's Life in Orlando, Florida"     



Anybody mind if we post another video from the recent 75th Birthday evening for Ed Sanders?
Ed continues to be indefatigable and will be appearing at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York on September 18th to speak about his latest publication, A Book of Glyphs from Steve Clay's Granary Books




(and, yes, that' is the ubiquitous Steven Taylor, backing him up on vocals and guitar once again)