PoetryOlympics.com : Events

Birthday Celebration of William Blake at the National Portrait Gallery

Thursday 29 November, 7pm
With St William Blake's 250th birthday in mind, the William Blake Klezmatrix Trio - Michael Horovitz (vocals, poetry and anglo-saxophone), Madeline Solomon (vocals and flute), and Annie Whitehead (vocals and trombone) will perform songs and other texts by Blake and Horovitz, with written and improvised music by all three. Download a flyer.

Bookable in advance at £3 from:

National Portrait Gallery, St Martins Place, London WC2; tel - 020 7306 0055

New Waste Land Launch at Muswell Hill Bookshop

From 7pm on Thursday 13th December, Michael Horovitz will read, sing from, and discuss A New Waste Land - free admission and refreshments: Muswell Hill Bookshop, 72 Fortisgreen Road, London N10; telephone - 020 8444 7588.

A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium

Pre-Publication Launch on 8 November at Waterstones, Covent Garden, who write:

We are very pleased to announce that poet Michael Horovitz will be reading from his about to be published contemporary epic 'A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium' , at Covent Garden Waterstone's, 9-13 Garrick Street, at 8p.m. on Thursday 8 th November 2007. Michael has been a key figure in world poetry since the 1960s, publishing various books of verse (selections from which are gathered up in his 'Wordsounds & Sightlines' , New Departures 1994). He has performed, sung, played music, exhibited and published alongside an extraordinary galaxy of fellow writers and artists, including major catalysts of the beat and pop art movements and - more recently, with the Poetry Olympics - an ongoing series of live events and books which feature a diverse selection of contemporary poetic communicators. It should be a treat to hear him read from 'A New Waste Land' , a lavishly illustrated assemblage ten years in the making - and a punchy chronicle of the Clinton-Bush-Blair-Brown years which is by turns challenging, funny, outraged and redeeming.

Free Admission and Refreshments

Daily Mail
Far more overtly political than Eliot's riddling original... takes arms against a world 'with no gods/except money/and destruction...'

Amazon Synopsis

In his most political, experimental and revolutionary work to date, Michael Horovitz adapts and extends the structure, music and collage apocalypse of Eliot's 1922 'The Waste Land' to take a hard look at the world from 1997 to 2007.

Poetry Olympics/New Departures Present the 2007
Jazz Poetry SuperJam

Thursday 4 October 2007 from 7.30pm till late

On National Poetry Day, Thursday 4th October, Michael Horovitz will be presenting his annual Jazz Poetry SuperJam at the 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, London W1, from 7.30pm till late, featuring – among other comrades – Adrian Mitchell, Fran Landesman, Mahmood Jamal and Adam Horovitz, with Wally Fawkes’ and Martin Davison’s clarinets, Clark Tracey and Rocco Webb on drums, Madeline Solomon on flute and vocals, Neil Cowley at the piano, and the William Blake Klezmatrix band – plus Special Guests still to be confirmed.

Michael will be reading and singing from his magnum opus, A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium (New Departures £15), of which early copies will be for sale, alongside various other publications and recordings featuring most of the artists performing in the SuperJam.
A must for all discriminating music, song and poetry lovers.

Admission £10 (£7.50 Members/Concs) at the door from 7.30pm.
The 100 Club is midway between Oxford Circus & Tottenham Ct Rd tube stns

(Venue Enquiries 020 7636 0933)

At 1.15pm on National Poetry Day, Michael will be at the National Portrait Gallery:

Michael Horovitz for National Poetry Day

On National Poetry Day, Michael Horovitz reads and sings from his just-published 464-page magnum opus, 'A New Waste Land', a copiously illustrated Jeremiad-cum-proposed renavigation for Timeship Earth at Nillennium. This is a free event.

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE. Tel: 020 7306 0055

Attila the Stockbroker; The Blakespeares; Jean Binta Breeze; Liza Hayden Adam Horovitz; Michael Horovitz; Mahmood Jamal; Fran Landesman; Miles Landesman; Niall McDevitt; Edgard Allen POE; Dave Russell; Lemn Sissay; Madeline Solomon; E J Thribb; Hank Wangford; The William Blake Klezmatrix; Billy Wobbledagger and POEtentially Extra-Special Guests tbc

The William Blake Klezmatrix, featuring Pete Lemer piano, Madeline Solomon flute and vocals, and Michael Horovitz anglo-saxophone, poetry and songs; lyricist-poet Fran Landesman, with Miles Landesman guitar & vocals; Molly Parkin’s Jazz Lovers, plus jazz poems and prose from Sophie Parkin; and Special Valentine’s Guests –

Spicejazz at Spice of Life
"London's hottest jazz venue"
(www.spicejazz.co.uk)

Pre-bookings: info@spicejazz.co.uk
020 7739 3025
Downstairs at the Backstage Bar
Spice of Life
6 Moor Street, London W1
(off Cambridge Circus next to the Palace Theatre – Tottenham Court Rd and Leicester Sq tubes)

Thursday 16 November 2006 from 7.30pm till late

MICHAEL HOROVITZ
The legendary beat poet, musician, artist and visionary returns to the place of his upbringing. An early champion of oral and jazz poetry whom Ginsberg called ‘a Cockney, Albionic, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard’, Michael Horovitz has battled for almost half a century to promote poetry, music and literature. Author of over thirty collections of poetry, Horovitz will read from his latest offering A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium, a verse and prose deconstruction of contemporary political, moral and ecological degeneration.
‘a dreamer, a maverick … transmedial crusader’ Martin Amis

MOAZZAM BEGG
From February 2002 to January 2005 Birmingham-born Moazzam Begg was imprisoned without charge or trial by the US government at Guantanemo Bay detainment camp, Cuba. In this exclusive appearance, Begg will read his own poems and extracts from Enemy Combatant, his shocking account of three years spent in captivity.

‘The guards on both sides held me up for a few steps, and I noticed the ground under my feet was very different from anything I'd seen in Afghanistan. There were small light-brown sun-baked rocks, it seemed a lot drier, hotter...and I could smell the sea. it was distinctly different to the smell of the sea in Britain. But I could definitely smell the sea.’ Enemy Combatant

This event was quite unusual – you can download a reasonably accurate account of it by Haroon Siddique in the Ham & High.

There will be a 50th Birthday Celebration of Ginsberg's Howl on Wednesday 1st November 2006 from 6 – 10pm at The Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC2 3RJ, featuring Adrian Mitchell, Michael Horovitz, Aidan Dun, the Wholly Communion and Allen Ginsberg Live In London films, & much else – for more info visit www.allenginsbergdvd.com; to book tickets in advance at £10, email with your details to cedricrogers@hotmail.co.uk

Thursday 5 October 2006 from 7.30pm till late

On National Poetry Day, Thursday 5 October, there will be a marathon Jazz Poetry SuperJam at the 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, London W1, with poet/singers Pete Brown, John Cooper Clarke, Liza Hayden, John Hegley, Adam and Michael Horovitz, Mahmood Jamal, Fran Landesman, Niall McDevitt, Adrian Mitchell and Billy Wobbledagger, plus the Webb Sisters, the William Blake Klezmatrix, the Blakespeareans and the New Departures AllStars bands – featuring Peter Lemer (pno), Ian Smith (tpt), Madeline Solomon & Keith Waithe (flutes), Annie Whitehead (tbn) and other Olympian Troubadours Unanimous tbc – from 7.30 till late. Watch this space and please tell all discriminating music, song and poetry lovers. Admission £10 (£7.50 Members/Concs) at the door from 7.15pm.

WBK at Oxford Street's 100 Club in October 2005: Madeline Solomon,
M H, Annie Whitehead and Michael Lukes (Julian Roberts)

As founder of The Poetry Olympics Festivals, his aim has always been to join hands, hearts and heads, to communicate and exchange wordsounds at the grass roots. He has had to fight against considerable odds, to continue over four-and-a-half decades as actor-producer of New Departures, 'the most substantial avant-garde magazine in Britain' (Times Literary Supplement).

He was an early champion of oral and jazz poetry, whose flamboyant performances have energised every kind of audience on both sides of the Atlantic. Taking time out from putting the finishing touches to his magnum opus, A New Waste Land, 'the Charlie Parker of the readings circuits' (John Fuller) limbers up for his jazz set later this evening by reading and singing from the recent New Departures anthologies POT!, POP!, POM! and POW!, as well as from his own Midsummer Morning Jog Log and Wordsounds & Sightlines: New & Selected Poems.

from 10.00pm – 12.00am: The Jazz Troubadours – Stan Tracey & Michael Horovitz performed a late night set of Jazz, Poetry, and Jazz Poetry.

Grandmaster Tracey at the grand piano, with Horovitz floating out his songs, anglo-saxophone & poetic wordsounds unlimited, were relished by Miles Kington at a previous gig:

'. . . they both reach peaks of excitement when they seem to be trying to pound the keyboard – or the English language – into submission. Should be a good evening, if you've got the head for a powerful potion.'

To find out more about these, and other events and publications, please send stamped self-addressed envelopes to: