International Poetry Incarnation,
The Original Program,
The Royal Albert Hall, June 11th, 1965,
Smoking Permitted.
Thomas, Gary, Christopher, Camille, Annie, Michael, Don, Cathy, others…
I certainly don’t see a problem, and I second Thomas’s drift in this comment. The thread is about open space, cornfield, Nebraska style space. Thomas has a point. You read what you want to read. Volume can only be stimulating, especially when the discourse is conducted at such a high level. I’m sure this is exactly what Ms. Lilly had in mind, free and open forums which grow organically. Any given post can sustain pointed commentary for only so long before drift, meta-commentary, opinion, personal ideology and the gifts of individual experience begin to take hold. I, for one, feel extremely lucky, as one of the hired perpetrators these last few months that the threads unfold the way they do. Maybe Gary has a point – some people could be scared away by the clobbering breadth of the most enthusiastic threaders. But perhaps not. I suspect a lot of people are reading just for the fun of it, for the spectacle, without necessarily feeling the need to contribute. And I’ve seen enough examples of people, late in the day, breaking in without any trepidation. Thomas has brought up a lot of good points here about the way things are supposed to work. And I would say, having observed this process over the last six months, that, given the lawlessness, there has always been a sense of decorum, even decorum threaded into the syntax of insult (a wonderful thing to see). We are all at a very lucky moment in the progress of letters. A kind of 18th century vibrancy is again the order of the day. We should all thank the circumstances that have led to this moment. We should drink a lot of coffee and get to work.
Martin
POSTED BY: MEARL ON JULY 6, 2009 AT 12:02 AM
Honestly, you all, go and read such passionate and well-informed commentary, and BLUSH! Go and read it right here, and then look at Harriet today!
Christopher
Scarriet 
thomasbrady said,
October 30, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Would Allen Ginsberg have been banned from Blog: Harriet?
click to read post
“Are you beautiful? Are you my angel? Will you kiss my tender parts?”
-125 votes
cowpattyhammer said,
October 31, 2009 at 1:27 am
SO WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
from Blog:Harriet, June 5th, 2009
I was actually there at the famous/infamous INTERNATIONAL POETRY INCARNATION at the Royal Albert Hall in London on June 11th, 1965, organized in part by Eric Mottram, and the real start of the poetry wars. Here’s who appeared more or less dressed but don’t worry, not sober. But before the list picture where it’s at, the Royal Albert Hall, white and gold, airy and good, ready for the silver-haired conductor to raise his baton in hushed silence even as we smoked like chimneys and our too many children peed on the floor:
Pablo Neruda
Laurence Ferlinghetti
Michael Horowitz
Pablo Fernandez
Christopher Logue
Pete Brown
Gregory Corso
Harry Fainlight
John Esam
Paolo Lionni
Alexander Trocchi
Anselm Hollo
Ernst Jandl
Simon Vinkenoog
Dan Richter
George Macbeth
Adrian Mitchell
Allen Ginsberg
and somewhere in the evening
Andrei Voznesensky.
and the voice of William Burroughs [sic]
Sometime later I helped prop up Chögyam Trungpa in Scotland while he peed and then, when we’d got him back in bed, more or less wrote down what I could of the crazy wisdom while throwing shots of whiskey out the window for the dakinis. After Rimpoche had passed out I’d go downstairs in the Scottish darkness to my cold, stone office where I forced it into the poetry which would eventually become Naropa. That was 1969.
Not my poetry, I’m not saying that–but the impulse to write it, the process, the mechanics, how it got written. Because the scene I’ve just described was already an archetype etched in my mind four years before by Harry Fainlight on acid, Alexander Trocchi on heroin, and Allen Ginsberg on the floor with nothing on but his cymbals.
So we’re all in this together.
Christopher
POSTED BY: CHRISTOPHER WOODMAN ON JUNE 5, 2009 AT 11:18 PM
Leon Horton said,
August 6, 2022 at 4:36 pm
I’m currently researching material for a possible book on the International Poetry Incarnation. I would love to talk to you about your experience of the event.
Original Program support said,
May 17, 2011 at 11:33 am
INTERNATIONAL POETRY INCARNATION
England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, & London’s towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England’s green & pleasant bowers.
World declaration hot peace shower! Earth’s grass is
free! Cosmic poetry Visitation accidentally happening
carnally! Spontaneous planet-chant Carnival! Mental
Cosmonaut poet epiphany, immaculate supranational
Poesy insemination!
Skullbody love-congress Annunciation,
duende concordium, effendi tovarisch Illumination,
Now! Sigmatic New Departures Residu of Better
Books & Moving Times in obscenely New Directions!
Soul revolution City Lights Olympian lamb-blast!
Castalia centrum new consciousness hungry
generation Movement roundhouse 42 beat
apocalypse energy-triumph!
You are not alone!
Miraculous assumption! O Sacred Heart invisible
insurrection! Albion! awake! awake! awake! O
shameless bandwagon! Self evident for real naked
come the Words! Global synthesis habitual for this
Eternity! Nobody’s Crazy lmmortals Forever!
patmonk said,
August 3, 2017 at 4:03 pm
I was also there, it was the last ‘event’ I attended before abandoning the Motherland for the Colonies. Living in San Francisco for almost 40 years and married to Gregory Corso’s ex wife Lisa B.
Patrick Monk.RN. SF. Ca.
Desdi said,
August 6, 2017 at 11:24 am
Did someone mention Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche ?
https://connecthook.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/vajra-cast-from-golden-heights/
noochinator said,
August 6, 2017 at 1:01 pm
Earlier this year I lapped up When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School by Sam Kashner—the whole cast of characters (Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso et al.) was there in the mid-70s at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.
http://www.paperbackswap.com/When-Cool-Life-Sam-Kashner/book/0060005661/
Desdi said,
August 6, 2017 at 11:48 pm
No disrespect to Cowpattyhammer or Noochinator, but I don’t get the whole Naropa thing. Beatnik Buddhists in Boulder doing…. what exactly?
Putting lots of exclamation points after their verses?
Why ennoble a drunk Tibetan charlatan by calling him “Rimpoche” ?
I just don’t get it.
noochinator said,
August 8, 2017 at 3:47 pm
One takes peace where one finds it—
The teacher met their needs—
And that’s a wondrous thing, for
In each of us a soul bleeds.
There’s a great documentary on Burroughs, from 1983—it’s so good that it’s been released in the Criterion series:
https://www.criterion.com/films/28657-burroughs-the-movie
Desdi said,
August 8, 2017 at 4:02 pm
Burroughs was a tortured soul for sure – probably burning in hell (?)
but I love his voice overs on “Seven Souls” by Material:
Desdi said,
August 8, 2017 at 4:06 pm
Sorry — I posted wrong vid (it’s still a great groove).
Here is the one with Burrough’s spoken words:
noochinator said,
August 9, 2017 at 10:25 pm
Thanks for these—and here’s a link to an amazing archive of historically important San Francisco-based classical-music-and-beyond radio programs:
https://archive.org/details/other_minds