Thursday May 1, 7 pm
Walker Art Center, Cinema
1750 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis

Join us for a May Day extravaganza as Michael McClure unleashes a mighty roar! A central figure of the Beat Generation, McClure has enchanted audiences through his poetry, plays, and performances for nearly six decades. His poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially the animal consciousness that lies dormant in mankind, and he has collaborated with artists such as Wallace Berman, Bruce Connor, and Ray Manzarek. Don't miss this special event with a living legend, co-presented by Rain Taxi Review of Books and the Walker Art Center. This event is FREE and open to the public!

"Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence . . ." —Robert Creeley

"McClure's poetry is a blob of protoplasmic energy." —Allen Ginsberg

"Without McClure's roar there would have been no Sixties." —Dennis Hopper

After moving from Kansas to San Francisco as a young man, Michael McClure was one of the poets who participated in the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl. A central figure in the Beat Movement and the San Francisco Renaissance, McClure is immortalized as Pat McLear in Jack Kerouac’s novel Big Sur. 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. McClure continues to reach new audiences through his poetry, plays, and performance, and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Amy.

McClure's many books include Hymns to St. Geryon (1959), The Beard (1967), Rare Angel (1973), Antechamber (1978), Rebel Lions (1991), and Plum Stones (2002). His latest release is Ghost Tantras (City Lights), originally self-published in 1964 and long out of print. Ghost Tantras is one of McClure's signature works, a mix of lyrical, guttural, and laryngeal sounds, lion roars, and a touch of detonated dada. See more at http://www.michael-mcclure.com/.

author photo by Garrett Caples