''Allen Ginsberg Live in London'' is a DVD film of

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

reading his poetry, singing songs and performing a Tibetan meditation live on stage in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on Thursday 19 October 1995, at

Megatripolis Megatripolis was an underground London club night created by Encyclopaedia Psychedelica/Evolution editor and founder of the Zippie movement Fraser Clark, and partner Sionaidh Craigen as well as a great many others. The club combined New Age ideo ...

club-night at

Heaven Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...

nightclub, London. Filmed and edited by Steve Teers, of Diva Pictures, the film was recorded as part of an archive record for 'megatripolis', the underground psychedelic club-night which ran at Heaven nightclub from 1993 to 1996. The DVD sees Ginsberg reading a selection of his work from the 1970s '' White Shroud Poems'' era to 80's ''Cosmopolitan Greetings'' and 90's new and unpublished poems. Ginsberg was on stage for almost an hour, performing under theatrical lighting in front of about 1000 people. Dressed in blue shirt, red braces and slacks, Ginsberg was reading on stage at a single microphone with assistance from poet

Tom Pickard Tom Pickard (born 1946, Newcastle upon Tyne, England) is a poet, and documentary film maker who was an important initiator of the movement known as the British Poetry Revival. Biography Pickard grew up in the working-class suburbs of Cowgate, Newc ...

for the duration of the performance, also occasionally playing harmonium. He was initially introduced by Lee Harris who had also booked him for the event. Ginsberg performed

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

accompanying himself on the

harmonium The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. T ...

as a singalong finale. This was Ginsberg's last public stage appearance in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. The film premiered in

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist si ...

in June 2005, and was later released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

, officially released with the permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd. The film has been shown at numerous arts festivals. It was shown at a 50th anniversary celebration of "

Howl Howl most often refers to: *Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species *Howl (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg Howl may also refer to: Film * ''The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film * ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 American arthouse b ...

", Ginsberg's iconic protest poem on 1 November 2006 in Bloomsbury, London, where live readings from

Adrian Mitchell Adrian Mitchell FRSL (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's Cam ...

Michael Horovitz Michael Yechiel Ha-Levi Horovitz (4 April 1935 – 7 July 2021) was a German-born British poet, editor, visual artist and translator who was a leading part of the Beat Poetry scene in the UK. In 1959, while still a student, he founded the "t ...

and Aidan Dun also took place along with a screening of '' Wholly Communion'', Peter Whitehead's famous film of the 1965 Royal Albert Hall poet meet. The DVD film was released initially through major stores and remains available through amazon and its website. It is a fine alternative tribute to Ginsberg's mastery of performance poetry. It is an archive film and thus reflects the sound and picture quality of archive film footage.

Notes and references

External links

''Allen Ginsberg Live in London''
DVD Home page - tribute, poetry, photos, photographer links, Allen Ginsberg soundbites
''Allen Ginsberg Live in London'' at amazon
British documentary films 2005 films 2000s British films {{2000s-UK-film-stub