Ginsberg

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926 - 1997)

In 1965, the famous, or notorious 'beat' poet agreed to visit Newcastle and give a reading in the Morden Tower on the city's mediaeval walls. This venue had been started by Tom and Connie Pickard and had already featured readings by Edwin Morgan, Alexander Trocchi, Robert Creeley, Brian Patten and Hugh McDiarmid. Basil Bunting (q.v.), friend and mentor of Tom Pickard, was a keen supporter of the initiative. In his words, the Tower had 'done more to give Newcastle a good name among men of literary intelligence than all the barren schemes of the authorities.'
Connie Pickard received a postcard from Ginsberg which read:

'Dear Sir Tom I do deeply desire to visit Newcastle and read Poesy and touch the feet of Mr Bunting whom I've read since 1952 (and earlier)... and could you find me a place to sleep for a night or two and introduce me to gangs of long-haired rockers? By gum?... '

Three years later, 13 October 1968, Ginsberg wrote an account of his first visit to the city:

'I felt like a bearded emissary of another hemisphere, and eager to share my magic wares I boarded the train North happily. Greeted at Newcastle Central Station by the most furious display of gnostic graffiti in the gentleman's room walls that I had ever seen on the planet...
...Morden Tower was famed afar, appropriately English-tongue poets of the Western Hemisphere knew that Basil Bunting (companion & peer of the great word masters of the century) had found companions among the young in Newcastle who had answered the Great Call of Poesy. More charmingly, the young had sought out and found the older Bard in his obscurity near the city, and drawn him out to word-joust and night-intoxication properly renewed by their own attentive enthusiasm and good cheer...
...I gave the most complete reading of my own written work that I ever vocalised in one evening... I began at my beginning as a poet and read past midnight all the scribbling I had done for a decade.
Certainly happy circumstances for a poet, and happier to hear Bunting's concern. 'Too many words, condense still more.' Thus the reading at Morden Tower altered my own poetic practice slightly towards greater economy of presentation. So I learned more reading at Morden Tower than I had at a hundred universities.'
[Quoted from Tom Pickard Northern Review Volume 8. pp 44-45]

The reading began with Ginsberg asking Bunting how familiar he was with his work and when Bunting said hardly at all, began at the beginning, reading from Empty Mirrors through Howl and Kaddish. At the opening of the second half he dedicated and read 'To an Old Poet in Peru' to Bunting. Bunting enjoyed the visit and wrote enthusiastically a week later to his friend Denis Goacher: 'He looks like an owl in a bunch of ivy and carries his eccentricity quite a distance, but is amusing and very likeable. His work far too diffuse, all prime sautier he hasn't learned to cut or even the respected art of the pumice. But there is quite a lot there, if it could be sewn together. Whitmanesque.'

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
ALLEN GINSBERG (1926 - 1997) In 1965, the famous, or notorious 'beat' poet agreed to visit Newcastle and give a reading in the Morden Tower on the city's mediaeval walls. This venue had been started by Tom and Connie Pickard and had already featured readings by Edwin Morgan, Alexander Trocchi, Robert Creeley, Brian Patten and Hugh McDiarmid. Basil Bunting (q.v.), friend and mentor of Tom Pickard, was a keen supporter of the initiative. In his words, the Tower had 'done more to give Newcastle a good name among men of literary intelligence than all the barren schemes of the authorities.' Connie Pickard received a postcard from Ginsberg which read: 'Dear Sir Tom I do deeply desire to visit Newcastle and read Poesy and touch the feet of Mr Bunting whom I've read since 1952 (and earlier)... and could you find me a place to sleep for a night or two and introduce me to gangs of long-haired rockers? By gum?... ' Three years later, 13 October 1968, Ginsberg wrote an account of his first visit to the city: 'I felt like a bearded emissary of another hemisphere, and eager to share my magic wares I boarded the train North happily. Greeted at Newcastle Central Station by the most furious display of gnostic graffiti in the gentleman's room walls that I had ever seen on the planet... ...Morden Tower was famed afar, appropriately English-tongue poets of the Western Hemisphere knew that Basil Bunting (companion & peer of the great word masters of the century) had found companions among the young in Newcastle who had answered the Great Call of Poesy. More charmingly, the young had sought out and found the older Bard in his obscurity near the city, and drawn him out to word-joust and night-intoxication properly renewed by their own attentive enthusiasm and good cheer... ...I gave the most complete reading of my own written work that I ever vocalised in one evening... I began at my beginning as a poet and read past midnight all the scribbling I had done for a decade. Certainly happy circumstances for a poet, and happier to hear Bunting's concern. 'Too many words, condense still more.' Thus the reading at Morden Tower altered my own poetic practice slightly towards greater economy of presentation. So I learned more reading at Morden Tower than I had at a hundred universities.' [Quoted from Tom Pickard Northern Review Volume 8. pp 44-45] The reading began with Ginsberg asking Bunting how familiar he was with his work and when Bunting said hardly at all, began at the beginning, reading from Empty Mirrors through Howl and Kaddish. At the opening of the second half he dedicated and read 'To an Old Poet in Peru' to Bunting. Bunting enjoyed the visit and wrote enthusiastically a week later to his friend Denis Goacher: 'He looks like an owl in a bunch of ivy and carries his eccentricity quite a distance, but is amusing and very likeable. His work far too diffuse, all prime sautier he hasn't learned to cut or even the respected art of the pumice. But there is quite a lot there, if it could be sewn together. Whitmanesque.'
Return to Index	On to next Author