The Challenge of Editing a Beat Legend

A wonderful look at the working style of one of SPLAB’s poetry heroes, Michael McClure, as described by his last editor Garrett Caples. To hear about the project on which they collaborated, dig this:

Mule Kick Blues Book Release with Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, and Garrett Caples

Event will be held on Zoom. Click the link in the event description for info.,

Saturday, May 8th, 3:00 p.m. PT / 6:00 p.m. ET

 

 

 

 

 

The following day your humble narrator will be part of:

Michael McClure Memorial Tribute

Event will be held on Zoom. Click the link in the event description for info., Sunday, May 9th, 3:00 p.m. PT / 6:00 p.m. ET

A memorial tribute to

Michael McClure

with readings and remembrances by

Russ Tamblyn, CAConrad, Margaret Randall, Forrest Gander, George Herms, Jerome Rothenberg, Cedar Sigo, Paul Nelson, Lyn Hejinian, Andrew Schelling, Amy McClure, Jane McClure, and Joanna McClure.

This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.

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Event is free, but registration is required.

(Click Here) to register.

To Garrett’s article:

I’ve been an editor at City Lights for a dozen years, during which time I’ve worked with some Beat Generation greats: David Meltzer, Diane di Prima, Joanne Kyger. As a poet myself, I’ve considered it an education to watch such poets be poets as we worked on their manuscripts and they made demands about their presentation on the page. And so it happened with Michael McClure. I’d met Michael here and there, but I began to know him in 2013 when City Lights republished his revolutionary volume of “beast language” poetry, Ghost Tantras (1964). It wasn’t my project, editorially, but I used it as an excuse to interview him for the alt-weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian. READ MORE

Hear Michael McClure being interviewed in 1995.

The 15th year of the Poetry Postcard Fest is dedicated to the memory of Michael McClure and Diane di Prima. See: www.popo.cards or register at www.popo.submittable com

See also our online poetry postcard fest exhibit: https://www.poetrypostcardfestexhibit.org/

About Splabman

Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
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