Of Interest

A Certain Kind of Wizard Celebration

Please join us to celebrate Ira Cohen in NYC

There will be poetry and poetic remembrances, photographs, film clips, music and more. Refreshments will be provided.

Wednesday May 14th, 2025 at 7pm
Bowery Poetry Club at 308 Bowery, NYC

Thursday May 15th, 2025 at 7pm
The Bunker at 222 Bowery, NYC

Poet, photographer, filmmaker, publisher, and dauntless world traveler, Ira Cohen was a mythic figure of boundless energy who was a catalyst for creative scenes in New York, Tangier, Kathmandu, Amsterdam, and wherever else he happened to alight in his wanderings. Cohen knew the best and the brightest — William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Vali Myers, Brion Gysin, Paul Bowles, Charles Henri Ford, and so many others. Filmmaker Jack Smith, Julian Beck and Judith Malina of The Living Theatre were close friends and collaborators on many projects. A Certain Kind of Wizard includes Cohen’s poetry, photos, interviews, and prose writings from his remarkable journals.

A Review of Time Waits

A review of Time Waits: Selected Poems 1956 – 1986 by Martin Matz

“Matz at times comes close to reaching the breath-taking heights that Kaufman achieved in his great works of poetry, especially his final work, The Ancient Rain, but there is something distinctive and slightly haunting about his style. It reaches deep into the cosmos (outer space) and also down into the innermost recesses of the poet’s own self (inner space) and the imagery jumps from one luxuriant image to the next, in a psychedelic ‘feast’ of images that coalesce into a whirlwind, a swirling chiaroscuro of colors, like the colors that grace the cover of this book, that build upon each other, and reflect or refract previous images. The effect is both hypnotic and captivating to the reader who is under its spell.”

–Matthew James Mclaughlin
Read the review

Solar Hits by Tate Swindell

Solar Hits is the first full length collection of poems by San Francisco poet Tate Swindell, an archivist, poet photographer, and founder of Unrequited Records.

The book launch will be at City Lights on March 13 at 7PM. There will be a brief conversation with Julien Poirier followed by a reading from the book. The event will be streamed by City Lights. You do not need to pay anything to Eventbrite to register for the event.

Link to pre-order the book from Asterism distro

Link to register for the City Lights stream

A Place for Poetry – Three Modern Voices

The Golda Foundation is proud to present:

Poster with the announcement of A Place for Poetry -- Three Modern Voices, prepared by Helen Oliver

and extra guest
Danny Rosen!

Photo of Edgar Oliver by Regina Betancourt
Edgar Oliver
Photo of Theodore Schroetter by Robert Yarra
Theodore Schroetter
Photo of Ron Riddell by Sergio Rivera
Ron Riddell

Tuesday, 23 July 2024, 6 PM

Jefferson Market Library
Willa Cather room on the first floor
425 6th Ave, New York, (212) 243-4334

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Lionel Ziprin, The Poet-Magus of the Lower East Side

Lionel Ziprin was a prolific writer, a mystical poet who produced thousands of poems in his time, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that from his published output: In 1990 a small wooden box with ephemera and a flexi-disc was released and 2017 saw the publishing of his book Songs for Schizoid Siblings, there were a few contributions to magazines and that’s it. So it was high time to bring some more attention to Lionel Ziprin.

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An Ode to Winnie

Deaths of tortoises do not always set things in motion. But obviously, Winnie, the tortoise of Vali Myers and Gianni Menichetti, had always been a little different.

Winnie was a confidant and a source of inspiration to Vali and Gianni and since Winnie had always been around, her death in February 2021 caused Gianni to realize that he was now the only living memory of Vali’s legacy. He had a sense that Winnie’s death symbolized the end of an era. In the period of reflection that followed, he wrote five poems.

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Constant Seeker

This guest post by Bill Sasser was originally published in Raw Vision #115 and on billsasser.com. Posted here with permission.

Man Treading Water, 2015, oil on canvas, 38 x 60 in.

“Have you ever seen a whale?” Herbert Kearney asks perched on a stool in his huge post-industrial art space, just downriver from New Orleans’s French Quarter. “I’ve seen a whale, a big whale, off Alaska. Seeing it you realize we aren’t alone in the universe, big monster fins are skimming under the surface. That big eye looking back at you, it’s the biggest soul in the world. They’re beautiful creatures.”

Just sitting still, Kearney emanates a halo of manic energy. Hennaed hair twisted back in a bun, he wears a wool coat, hat, and gloves—February 2005 is cold and the old hosiery mill is unheated.

A sculptor, painter, and poet who had spent a decade and a half traveling the world, he had arrived two years earlier and found a permanent spiritual home, in a port city where the creative slipstream welcomes newcomers, and art lives in the streets.

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On the passing of Winnie

Celebrated Dutch photographer Marco Bakker traveled to the Valley of Il Porto, in Positano, Italy, to deliver to his friend, Gianni Menichetti, a first copy of An Ode to Winnie, on which they collaborated. Winnie, who lived to the age of 120, was a magnificent tortoise, beloved of Vali Myers, and of Gianni. During his visit to the Valley, Marco took some beautiful photos of Gianni, featured here, using an old Speed Graphic camera.

For more information on An Ode to Winnie visit runningbeforethewind.com

Gianni Menichetti, Marco Bakker, and the Speed Graphic Camera. Photo by Marion Bos.
Marco Bakker with Speed Graphic camera and Gianni Menichetti in the Valley of Il Porto. Photo by Marion Bos.
Gianni Menichetti by Marco Bakker
Gianni Menichetti by Marco Bakker
Gianni Menichetti by Marco Bakker
Gianni Menichetti by Marco Bakker
Gianni Menichetti by Marco Bakker
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