A SUMMIT OF JOYFUL OLD SAVAGES

Doors at 7.30

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A SUMMIT OF JOYFUL OLD SAVAGES: A WORLD-PREMIERE READING BY FOUR  POETS WHO UNSETTLED ENGLAND AND FREAKED OUT AMERICA

ANSELM HOLLO // TOM RAWORTH // GUNNAR HARDING // ANDREI CODRESCU

ANSELM HOLLO is a Finnish poet and translator, and one the greatest American poets writing in English today. He has lived in the United States since 1967, and has published published more than forty titles of poetry in the UK and in the US. His prolific oeuvre gives no hint at the expectant joy of hundreds of his devoted fans when a new Hollo book appears. He's been an inspiration to several generations of poets, both as a poet and a teacher. Since 1989, he has taught in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo Poetics group elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate," in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins as Poet Laureate of the U.S. Hollo has translated poetry and belles-lettres from Finnish, German, Swedish and French into English. He was one of the early translators of Allen Ginsberg into German and Finnish. Poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley named their son Anselm Berrigan after Hollo. If you're a poet having a child about now, you'd do worse than naming him after the great Anselm, unless you want to name him after:

TOM RAWORTH, born in London, whose 1960 magazine Outburst gave England its first taste of poetry in the wild, by publishing Ed Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, and LeRoi Jones. He also founded Matrix Press, co-founded Goliard Press (with Barry Hall) and published Charles Olson for the first time in Britain. While bringing the wilderness back to the well-behaved lawns of England, he wrote The Relation Ship (1966), studied Spanish and translated the work of Vicente Huidobro. In the 1970s, he worked in the United State and Mexico, teaching in universities in Ohio, Chicago and Texas, and later lived in San Francisco where he was involved with the Zephyrus Image Press. He returned with his family to England in 1977 to take up the post of resident poet in King's College, Cambridge. In 2007 he was awarded the Antonio Delfini  prize for lifetime achievement, in Modena, Italy. He now lives in Brigton, Sussex. His many books include Catacoustics, 1991,West Wind 1984, Visible Shivers, 1987, Eternal Sections (1993)  Survival (1994), Clean & Well Lit (1996), Meadow (1999), Caller and Other Pieces (2007), Let Baby Fall (2008) and Windmills in Flames (2010). Raworth's 650-page Collected Poems was published in 2003. Raworth has created performance events and texts in collaboration with musicians such as Steve Lacy, Joelle Leandre,  Giancarlo Locatelli, and Steve Nelson-Raney; other poets, including Jim Koller,  Anselm Hollo,  Gregory Corso, Dario Villa, and Franco Beltrametti; and painters including Joe Brainard,  Jim Dine,  Giovanni D'Agostino and Micaëla Henich. His visual art consists of drawings, collage, and found art and has been exhibited in Italy, France, and South Africa.

GUNNAR HARDING is one of the great Swedish poets who, like Hollo and Raworth, gave his country's poetry a kick in the pants, and dragged it into the delights of 20th century's collaborative genius. Born in Stockholm, he started as a jazz musician, studied painting ,and made his literary debut in 1967. He has published sixteen volumes of poetry, as well as translations and nonfiction. In 1992 he was awarded the Bellman Prize by the Swedish Academy; 1993 saw publication of a comprehensive selection of his poetry, covering the years 1969-90. In 1995 he was awarded the Svenska Dagbladets Literature Prize in recognition of his important role in Sweden's literary life since the 1960s, and in 2001 he won the prestigious Övralid Prize. He is also a friend of Anselm Hollo's, who translated him into English and published his work in the U.S., and has collaborated with Tom Raworth in making life interesting on both sides of the Atlantic.

ANDREI CODRESCU was born in Sibiu, Romania, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1967. In 1970, his first poetry collection, License to Carry A Gun, won the Big Table Award. He has published over forty volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays since them. He is a weekly commentator on National Public Radio, with an audience of twenty-three millions, who have no idea what he is really saying. He has written and starred in documentary films, including the Peabody Award-winning, Road Scholar (1991), has covered the Romanian Revolution for NPR and ABC News in 1989, and was Professor of English at Louisiana State University. He lives in New Orleans and in Ozarks, where he now makes "witches" from uprooted trees. He knows all the above poets, among whom Anselm Hollo is one of his best friends. His latest books, from Princeton University Press, are The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess (2009), The Poetry Lesson (2010) and  Whatever Gets You Through The Night: A Story Of Sheherezade And The  Arabian Entertainments. He is going straight from this event to Stockholm at an ungodly time in the morning, for the Swedish publication of "The Posthuman Dada Guide."