Golda Foundation

ANDY CLAUSEN: Mr. Clausen was born in Belgium in 1943 and raised in Oakland, CA. He began writing poetry in 1965 after discovering Beat poets and writers. Mr. Clausen writes what could arguably be termed “outsider poetry” with an awareness of social consciousness. He is the author of 9 books of poetry. An international traveler, he has read his poetry in places as diverse as California and Kathmandu. Allen Ginsberg referred to Mr. Clausen as the “Future of American Poetry.” Mr. Clausen has taught at the Naropa Institute and worked in the Poetry in the Schools projects in CA, NJ, NY and CO. He currently teaches creative writing in NYC schools, and is working on memoirs of his friendships with various Beat poets. Mr. Clausen’s decisive work is the culmination of 30 years of his poetry, titled 40th Century Man.

IRA COHEN: Mr. Cohen was born in 1935. In the mid-sixties, he was publisher, editor and contributor to the Tangier based avant-garde magazine, GNAOUA, featuring writers such as William Burroughs and Bryan Gysin. In Kathmandu, as founder of the Starstreams Poetry Series under the Bardo Matrix imprint in the mid-seventies, Mr. Cohen published Gregory Corso, Charles Henri Ford and Paul Bowles, among other accomplished writers.

Mr. Cohen is also a noted photographer whose work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide—from New York to Tokyo and many places in between. As a filmmaker, his works include The Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda (recently released on DVD), Paradise Now and Kings with Straw Mats.

Mr. Cohen participated in the 2006 NYC Whitney Biennial which featured a reading by Mr. Cohen, an exhibit of his photographs, and a showing of his cult film The Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda (first screened in 1968). His friend Robert Yarra recently assisted Mr. Cohen in obtaining both an Author’s Guild grant and a PEN grant. Mr. Cohen has been a resident of NYC since 1980.

GREGORY CORSO: A friend and contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Beat poet Gregory Nunzio Corso authored approximately 20 volumes of poetry. His 1961 poetry collection Elegiac Feelings American established Mr. Corso as among the co-founders of the Beat movement. Mr. Corso was born in 1930 in NYC. He had a rough and tumble childhood and youth, ending up incarcerated for three years on a robbery charge. He spent his days in prison reading classics and memorizing the dictionary. His poems are infused with his own unique style and subject matter. Mr. Corso was also a painter whose paintings and drawings were shown in the 1990s at New York University.

Mr. Corso died in January of 2001. His ashes are buried in his beloved Rome, close to the British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, where he wished to be laid to rest. Golda Foundation founder, Robert Yarra, arranged for his friend Gregory to be buried in Rome at the exquisite Cimitero Acattolico.

FOMA: Friends of Myanmar Arts -- Founder Aung Aung Taik has created this foundation with the help of Golda Foundation, to aid the Burmese art community in providing materials, building workshops and studios, books, magazines and art history videos, financial help, opening art galleries in addition to creating a viable art market, creating self-reliance for economics, health and educational provisions for the people of Burma. Our vision is to create cultural exchange programs between the United States and Burma including art exhibitions, music and dance performances and literary events. www.fomarts.org

GOODIE MAGAZINE: NYC publishers and editors Foxy Kidd and Romy Ashby publish this imaginative and creative periodical. Each issue is devoted to an in-depth look at the quirky and unique personages who happily defy and deny the mundane. They are dedicated to preserving an endangered history. Goodie also publishes Panther Books. For more information, and to explore this unusually interesting website, visit www.goodie.org.

JACK HIRSCHMAN: Mr. Hirschman is the current poet laureate of San Francisco. He is the author of 50 volumes of poetry and essays and 25 books of translations from 8 languages. He published his first book in 1953. A socially conscious poet, Mr. Hirschman believes it is the artist’s role to challenge the status quo and fight for social transformation and political responsibility. He is a champion of the poor and the marginalized. Upon learning he had been selected as poet laureate, Mr. Hirschman stated it was an honor for him personally, “and I think a very small victory for the people’s movement, which has had very few victories recently in this chaotic world.” Jack Hirshman's The Arcanes, a 1000-page collection of many of his poems, was published to great acclaim last year by Multimedia Edizioni.

HERBERT KEARNEY: Mr. Kearney was born in Birmingham, England, grew up in Cork, Ireland and arrived in the United States in 1987. He is an accomplished poet and artist, as well as a practitioner of the obscure art of bone carving. Mr. Kearney has lived in NYC, Italy, CA and other places around the globe—including a stint in Fresno, CA with good friend and patron Robert Yarra. As Mr. Kearney wrote in the introduction to "Barbaric Haiku,” Mermaid Press, his hand-made book of poems and paintings, “having circumnavigated the globe thrice. . ."

Mr. Kearney currently lives in an artist’s warehouse in New Orleans where he paints and sculpts. He is a friend of all, a bon vivant, and a well-known denizen of the French Quarter. Among other locations, his paintings and sculptures have been shown in New Orleans, New York, and Worcester, Massachusetts. He is currently working on a three-ton wooden sculpture of Cucullan in Cork.

GERARD MALANGA: Gerard Malanga has been acclaimed internationally through his simultaneous careers as a poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator, and archivist. Educated at the University of Cincinnati and Wagner College in Staten Island, he studied poetry and underground filmmaking with the legendary Willard Maas and his wife, Marie Menken. He went to work for Andy Warhol in 1963 as a silk screening assistant and soon become a major influence on the art and films created in Warhol's Factory. He starred in many Warhol productions, such as The Chelsea Girls and Vinyl, and introduced Warhol to many of his most noteworthy collaborators, among them artist/filmmaker Paul Morrissey, the band, The Velvet Underground, and Warhol Superstars Nico and International Velvet.

Together Warhol and Malanga founded Interview magazine in 1969. In 1985 he was appointed first photo archivist to New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation; in 1988 he joined the Society of American Archivists. Malanga has written twenty-three books and numerous articles. His photographs and films have been exhibited throughout the world. Today, Malanga is a Fellow at the Simon's Rock of Bard College in Massachusetts.

His filmography includes over 29 films, from 1963-1997. He was an uncredited assistant director to some of Andy Warhol’s films. Among other books, Mr. Malanga wrote Achieving Warhol in 2002.

KHET MAR: Ms. Mar, novelist, fiction writer and essayist, is one of Myanmar's most active literary voices. She has published one novel, Wild Snowy Night, (1995), a volume of essays, Learning From My Son, (2001), and a collection of short stories with three other women writers, The Pink Before Dark, (1996). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, and was adapted into radio plays, and a story, Not Novel, was made into a short film in Japan. Currently she works as a freelance journalist in Yangon. The Golda Foundation sponsored her trip to the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

MARTY MATZ: Mr. Matz was born in Brooklyn and raised in Nebraska. He was a contemporary of Corso, Ginsberg and Kerouac. Mr. Matz was a larger than life poet, story teller, self-described “mystic nomad” and world traveler. He spent a great deal of time in Mexico, South America and Thailand, but called San Francisco home for many years. He read his work in many cities in the US. In 1999, Mr. Matz’ long-time patron and benefactor, Robert Yarra, convinced the City Lights Bookstore organizers to include Mr. Matz in joining the City Lights Italia Tour—a poetic triumph for Mr. Matz. He came to be loved and admired by the Italian people, and spent a year living in Rome after the tour ended.

Mr. Matz was a gentle person and a caring friend. His poems are dazzling and full of wild imagery. Mr. Matz passed away in NYC in October 2001. Panther Books posthumously published a book of his poetry, In The Seasons of my Eye in 2005. A website devoted to Mr. Matz is currently in development.

GIANNI MENICHETTI: Italian-born poet and painter. Great friend of Herbert Kearney and the late Vali Myers. He is a well-known artist residing on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. His paintings are colorful and intricate. Mr. Menichetti was the featured artist on the Goodie.org website with a display of his paintings and poetic vignettes of the beautifully stylized animals he paints and cares for. He is the author of the recently published Vali Myers -- A Memoir.

VALI MYERS: Ms. Myers was born in Australia in 1930. She was the lead dancer in the Melbourne Modern Ballet Company before leaving Australia to live in Europe. Ms. Myers moved to Post WWII Paris, where she lived on the streets of Saint Germain des Pres. While in Paris she met Tennessee Williams, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. She eventually left for Italy, where she found a “paradise” in a verdant valley near Positano. Ms. Myers drew colorful and intricate drawings using pen-and-ink, each one taking from 6 months to 2 years to complete. She decorated her face and body with similarly intricately detailed tattoos. Ms. Myers spent time in New York City where she held a salon in her room at the Chelsea Hotel. There have been five movies made of the life of Vali Myers. A book of her drawings and journals from 1980 to the present is in the works.

Ms. Myers returned to Australia in 1992 and kept a studio in Melbourne. She passed away after a short illness in February 2003.

GERALD NICOSIA: Nicosia has been an author, freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past 27 years, contributing to hundreds of publications. His biography of Kerouac, Memory Babe, garnered over 200 reviews worldwide, and has generally been recognized as the definitive book on Kerouac’s life and work. The Golda Foundation helped fund the restoration of Jack Kerouac tapes.

EDGAR OLIVER: Mr. Oliver is a resident of NYC and a published poet, playwright, actor and novelist. His latest book, The Man Who Loved Plants, is described as a horror/romance set in a botanical garden full of secrets and obsessions. The novel was published by Goodie Publications/Panther Books in 2004, and is available on the Goodie.org website. Mr. Oliver has recently returned from the Edinburgh Arts Festival where he performed with his theater troupe, the Axis Players.

CLAYTON PATTERSON: Clayton Patterson is an ex-teacher, an artist, photojournalist and a documentarian. He is president of the New York Tattoo Society, and the organizer of the first nine NYC International Tattoo Conventions. He runs the Outlaw Art Museum, and maintains his Clayton Archives, a large collection of photos, videos, and paper material representing aspects of the Lower East Side during the 1980s, ‘90s and 2000s. He has done much work in collaboration with Elsa Rensaa. He is the editor of Resistance: A Social and Political History of the Lower East Side, and Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side (Seven Stories Press, 2007, 2005).

Kinz, Tillou & Feigen gallery, in Chelsea district of New York featured Clayton's photographs in 2007. CAPTURED Clayton Patterson: The Lower East Side, a feature-length film by Ben Solomon, Daniel Levin, and Jenner Furst, portraying the famed documentarian Clayton Patterson and The Lower East Side was screened in October 2007, in conjunction with the premier exhibition of Patterson's photographs.

JANINE POMMY VEGA: Ms. Pommy Vega was born in Union City, NJ in 1942. She is one of the youngest of the Beat writers. She moved to Greenwich Village at the age of 15 to join the Beat movement.

Ms. Pommy Vega eventually moved to San Francisco, where she wrote her first book, Poems for Fernando. and toured with her band, Tiamalu. Ms. Pommy Vega is the author of some 12 books, including The Green Piano, Tracking the Serpent and Mad Dogs of Trieste, as well as the editor of various poetry anthologies. Ms. Pommy Vega currently resides in the Catskills and is active with the Poets in the Schools organization. She also teaches writing and literature in upstate New York prisons.

TASHA ROBBINS: Tasha Robbins is a painter. Portions of her Angel Alphabet (1988-1998) have been exhibited at the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California, and the Borofsky Gallery at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2003, with the help of the Golda Foundation, her triptych From the Aspect of Mercy (2000-2003) was exhibited in Italy at the Florence Biennale. She currently lives in Bedford Stuyvesant, New York.

ROGER RICHARD: Mr. Richard was born in 1932. He graduated from Columbia University in NYC. He was a scholar known for his extensive knowledge of classical music. With his wife, Irvyne Richard he owned and ran “The Rare Book Room” in Greenwich Village, NYC. Mr. Richard was a patron and supporter of Gregory Corso, who lived with the Richards’ for 12 years. “The Rare Book Room” was a beloved and much-frequented hangout for writers, bohemians, and some street folks whom Mr. Richard welcomed and assisted.

His kindness and financial support for creative down-and-outers eventually cost him his business. As Robert Yarra stated, “it was hard for Roger to run a business and a salon at the same time, especially as many of his friends at the bookstore were in an advanced state of inebriation.” Mr. Richard passed away on his birthday in December 2002 and is much missed among writers and others in the Village.

ED SANDERS: Mr. Sanders was (and remains) the most important member of the Fugs. He co-founded the band with Tuli Kupferberg in 1964, wrote and sang lead on many of the group's best songs, and was more responsible for their musical arrangements, harmonies, and overall direction than anyone else, sometimes producing their albums as well.

THEODORE SCHROETTER: Mr. Schroetter is a graduate of Princeton University, class of 1959. His senior thesis was titled, A Study of Certain Relationships between Charles Baudelaire and Thomas Stearns Eliot. Mr. Schroetter is a poet, essayist, and a genius of the English language. He resides in NYC. Mr. Schroetter edited Vali Myers -- A Memoir by Gianni Menichetti, published in September 2007 by the Golda Foundation.

X SWAMI X: X Swami X is a poet, raconteur, and stand-up comedian. Robert Yarra says, "I first met him in Berkeley where he was doing his comedy at Sproul Hall. I then saw him repeatedly in Venice, California, in the late 1970s. We became friends around that time during a chance meeting in Greenwich Village, and we have remained friends since then. Swami was born in Philadelphia and grew up on the streets there. His dad was a tough Philly cop. After getting in trouble with the law (mostly for stealing cars), Swami had a choice of either going to jail or going into the Merchant Marine. He chose the latter and shipped out. When he came back to the states, he spent 20 years in an Ashram in Washington, D.C. He then started his stand-up comedy in Berkeley, Venice, Hyde Park in London, and in Seattle." X Swami X wrote an enormously funny book titled I Lived Among the Hippies.

LIONEL ZIPRIN: Mr. Ziprin is a long-time resident of NYC. His grandfather, the Rabbi Naftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia had his rare liturgical music recorded in the 1950s by musicologist extraordinaire Harry Smith. With help from the Golda Foundation, Mr. Ziprin had these rare recordings transferred to CDs. Mr. Ziprin, now 84, is fulfilling a promise he made to his grandfather in 1955 to see that the recordings were not lost or forgotten. Mr. Ziprin was the subject of a New York Times article on February 5, 2006 and an NPR special on New Years Day, 2006. Both related Mr. Ziprin’s ongoing quest to fulfill his grandfather’s wish. Mr. Ziprin is also a poet, Cabbalah scholar and a mystic known for his off-beat humor and excursions into the “other realms” of human experience. He is the author of Almost All Lies are Pocket Size, published in 1990.

Also receiving Golda Foundation funds were the winners of the 2004 Golda Arts Competition, the Fresno Art Expo 2005 and the Valley Oaks Elementary School Children’s Art Competition. More information on these recipients is found on the Projects Page on this site.