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Michael Horovitz is one of the most fascinating, influential and elusive characters of late-twentieth century literature and art. He was described by Allen Ginsberg as a ‘Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard’, and Sir Paul McCartney said ‘Michael sets a great example to us all and is a credit to the arts in this country. In addition to his own many poetic and musical works, he keeps poetry accessible, and more than that . . . he¹s a good laff!’ He is one of the last living links to the great beat writers of the fifties and sixties.
In 1959, while still a student, he founded New Departures magazine publishing William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, and Steve Smith, achieved notoriety for his key role in the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall on June 11, 1965, alongside Allen Ginsberg and Alexander Trocchi. Since then he has been an implacably challenging voice, through his poetry, songs, broadcasts, and artworks, counting figures as diverse as Tony Benn, Brian Eno, David Hockney, and Margaret Drabble among his fans.
This evening Michael will discuss and project slides of his Bop Art, and Picture-Poems (which are on show until 5 June at Celia Purcell Contemporary), and perform from several of his own collections and New Departures Anthologies, including the acclaimed ‘A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium’, hailed by D J Taylor of The Independent as ‘a deeply felt clarion-call from the radical underground’. Not to be missed.
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