ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Like, I Hired The Albert Hall, Man

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30783, 22 June 1965, Page 13

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Like, I Hired The Albert Hall, Man

[From the Luuaun cut »eopu/iutriu of “The Press”]

Behind an astonish evening at the Royal Albert Hall—described by the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg as a “mad reading, an assemblage of souls”—was John Esam, a rather unorthodox New Zealander The event was the “International Poetry Incarnation” and a packed audience of 7000 heard such beat writers as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg declaiming samples of their work.

John Esam, aged 31, a bearded man with an amiable grin, who hails from Hastings and Wellington, was among the 16 beat poets from many lands who took part. He read from his “Orpheus and Euridyce,” a book of poetry which he said he had been writing for eight years. Before the readings I asked John about his connexion with the group and he replied: “Like, I disorganised

it. 1 just hired Albert Hall, man”

Four years ago John left New Zealand for England—“l can never save, but I just happened to have the money.” He lived for two years in Paris—“l am incapable of working; I am not trained for any job at all” and lived in what he called a beat hotel with such well-known writers and beatniks as Burrowes, Corso and Ginsberg. Then he returned to London. “MOST OF BEST”

About 10 days ago an American poet Daniel Richter, who wanders from country to country and edits a magazine “Residue” from wherever he happens to be—the . last issue: Greece—and John Esam realised that “most of the best” poets were visiting England at the time. They thought it would be a good idea to have a poetry reading. “Someone suggested we hire Albert Hall. We had to have backing. It just happened that someone had some money (£400) so I went and hired it . . .” The hall duly filled to the brim, at 10s and 5s a ticket. The evening was started by Ginsberg, one of the fathers of beat poetry—“the daddy of them all, daddy-o"—who sat cross-legged and chanted inchoherently to his own accompaniment with the Tibetan finger cymbals. As poet followed poet and their way-out lines and stanzas well sprinkled with fourletter words were amplified in the great domed hall, the majority of the audience seemed surprisingly bored and tolerant.

San Francisco’s Ferlinghetti delivered a paean for sex, repeating one four-letter word 50 times, but eyebrows stayed put. When he roared: “I am waiting for the age of anxiety to drop dead,” the audience cheered. IN MANY WAYS

Some poets stood, some sat and some even lay down to deliver their messages into the microphone hung round their necks. As they finished some bowed, some raised their arms like successful wrestlers.

A young American, Harry Fainlight, was heckled during his long poem about experiences under the “LSD” hallucinatory drug. Jeers welled up as the master of ceremonies was unable to persuade the poet to end the performance—as they reached a crescendo, a whistle shrilled somewhere in the hall and the crowd quietened, as if a referee had halted some thrilling movement on a football field. Esam’s poetic excerpt was received in calm, but without any great enthusiasm. Before his second piece, he said: “I wrote this while in gaol.” (Loud cheers.) When Ginsberg—recently deported from Czechoslovakia —came back to the rostrum near the end of the four-hour concert, he proved that his voice had the greatest carrying-power. He could have also won a palm for sheer acting ability.

“EXPLOSIVE” John Esam was proud about the box-office response: “It is the largest poetry audience in the English-speaking world. The Russians have had 10,000 at a reading, but in San Francisco they have only had up to 3000. . . . This is the most explosive thing that has happened on the English literary scene.”

He denies that there is a “beat movement” in poetry —“it just happened to be called this, there’s no such thing. It’s all just poetry.

After the poetry congress he said he would just “go and lie on a beach somewhere.” Yes, he would like to go back to New Zealand and to his Russian-speaking wife in Wellington—“lf I just happen to have the money.”