Poet Harold Norse’s to read in celebration of 91st Birthday

For Immediate Release
June 26, 2007

Contacts: Jerry Cimino (415) 399-9626
Tate Swindell (415) 867-1634

Poet Harold Norse’s to read in celebration of 91st Birthday

Beat Poet Harold Norse will be reading from his collected works on Sunday, July 15th at 2 PM in North Beach at The Beat Museum (540 Broadway). The acclaimed author will be reading from over seventy years of published poetry in honor of his recent 91st Birthday. The event is free and open to the public. The Beat Museum will also exhibit historic photos of Norse with other Beat Generation luminaries as well as several of his Cosmograph watercolors, created during his stay at the Beat Hotel.

Thunder’s Mouth Press published In The Hub of The Fiery Force, Norse’s collected poems, in 2003. At over 600 pages, this historic collection gathers seven decades of poetry. Norse’s autobiography Memoirs of a Bastard Angel is also in print. In it he details his exploits as poet born gay, Jewish and illegitimate in Brooklyn, New York at the turn of the century. His friends read like a whose-who of Twentieth Century American artists: Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Anais Nin, Jack Kerouac and W.H. Auden.

During the early 1960’s Norse resided in Paris at the infamous Beat Hotel. There he collaborated with Brion Gysin and William Burroughs in developing the cut-up method, adapting abstract and random techniques from painting to writing. During this time he also befriended poets Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg who also stayed at the hotel. Burroughs hailed Beat Hotel, Norse’s cut-up novella, as the most successful result of the cut-up method.

After traveling for fifteen years in Europe and North Africa, Norse returned to America in the late 1960’s to see the dawning of the hippie movement. Friend and admirer Charles Bukowski met him upon his return. Norse is currently searching for a publisher for a collection of correspondence between the two writers. In the early 1970’s Norse moved to San Francisco to participate in the city’s blossoming gay liberation movement.

His book Carnivorous Saint featured over three decades of gay themed poetry and was groundbreaking upon its publication in 1977. Twice recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Norse received a lifetime achievement award from the National Poetry Association in 1991.