a “second generation Beat writer,” he came to San Francisco in 1957. During the late 1950s period of the San Francisco renaissance, his personal expression as a young poet was formed by his association with Michael McClure, Lew Welch, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, and Philip Whalen. He is the author of several books of poetry, the most recent being, No Eyes: Lester Young (Black Sparrow Press, 2002) and Beat Thing (La Alameda Press). In the interim he also put together San Francisco Beats: Talking with the Poets (City Lights Books). He teaches in the graduate Poetics and undergraduate Humanities programs at New College of California.

at the age of 22 he gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read “Howl.” Today, he is more active than ever, writing and performing his poetry. He has worked extensively with his friend Ray Manzarek, the Doors’ keyboardist, at festivals and colleges and clubs. He has given hundreds of reading in venues as varied as the Fillmore Ballroom, Yale University, The National Biodiversity Conference at the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award, and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. He has written twenty plays and musicals; fourteen books of poetry including Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror, and Plum Stones; eight books of plays; four collections of essays; and two novels, The Mad Cub and The Adept. His songs include “Mercedes Benz,” popularized by Janis Joplin. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area hills with his wife, the sculptor, Amy Evans McClure.

has been associated with San Francisco poetry renaissance since the late 1950s. In the early 1960s he taught at San Francisco State College, and in 1963 he co – edited and published the little magazine Change with Richard Brautigan. His first book, Watermelons, contains an introduction by Allen Ginsberg and a letter from William Carlos Williams. He acknowledges both writers, along with Philip Whalen, as major influences. A later collection of poems, L’Autre, was the first full – length publication of the Black Sparrow Press. His later collections of poetry include, Meat Air and Goat Dances.  A complete checklist of his primary publications is included in Gary Lepper’s Bibliographical Introduction to 75 Modern American Authors. He was born 1937, in Iloilo, Philippines and came to the United States with his parents in 1945. He earned his bachelor’s degree from University of California in 1967 and his master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard University in 1969 and 1971, respectively. He returned to Berkeley where he received a professorship in the English Department teaching American literature and creative writing. His awards and honors include the Poets Foundation Award (1963), the Irving Stone Award of the Academy of American Poets (1966), and the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry (1966). His first novel, Magnetic Field(s), was one of five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1983.

October 23, 1927– March 7, 2005. He was born in San Francisco and raised in that city’s Excelsior neighborhood. He began writing poetry in elementary school and was briefly expelled from junior high for “intellectual delinquency” when he immersed himself in the work of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. His poetry was first published in the magazine View in 1943 when he was fifteen and in the final issue of the Surrealist magazine VVV the following year. His first book, Erotic Poems, was published in Berkeley in 1946. His second book, Ekstasis, appeared after the Six Poets at the Six Gallery reading and City Lights published his Selected Poems 1943 –1966.