I first encountered the poetry of Allen Ginsberg - the opening lines of 'Howl', naturally - in the beatnik scene of John Waters' Hairspray, which I saw in Newcastle's Tyneside Cinema in 1989; I was 16. It's been a rollercoaster of a relationship ever since, with me  performing Ginsberg, emulating him, rejecting, getting over, falling back in love with - and having to seriously question a lot of what I thought I knew about the relationship of poets to their poetry, as well as to themselves at other stages of their lives... At the moment, I'm deeply agnostic as to Ginsberg the man, but never more sure of the importance of Howl and Other Poems (1955), from which this is my favourite piece.  I hear tell that the "box house hills" of the opening line refer to the Daly City development just south of San Francisco , and are therefore also the "little boxes made of tickytacky" in Malvina Reynolds' protest song of 1962, which is a nice idea. I made this recording at Under the Bridge Studios in Newcastle's Ouseburn Valley in February 2017.  (I did have this off by heart a couple years back, this is from the book though.)

Ouseburn Feb 2017

SUNFLOWER SUTRA by Allen Ginsberg

taken from my next collection VERY FRIENDLY WEAPON (due out from Burning Eye Books, May 2018) - recorded by James M'Kay at Under The Bridge Studios at Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne, July 2017.

We Are Posterity

You get to the point where you give up trying to persuade your friends to read things, and just have to read things for them... My absolute favourite bit of E David, from 1952 (reprinted in the 1984 anthology "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine"). Recorded by James McKay in the Engine Room, HMS Windmill, April 2018.

Elizabeth David - A Gourmet in Edwardian London

Poet and reciter - the world's second oldest profession. Performing and agitating since the year 2000, rarely far from the East Coast Main Line.

Poet & Reciter James M'Kay

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