Allen Ginsberg

Description

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature. Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a poet-teacher father and Russian emigrant mother. Along with his friend Jack Kerouac, he attended Columbia University, but was initially expelled for writings obscenities on his dormitory window before returning to complete his graduation in 1948. When Howl and Other Poems was impounded by San Francisco customs in 1956, the subsequent trial for obscenity catapulted Ginsberg and his publisher City Lights to national fame and helped to define the Beat Generation. His Collected Poems 1947-1997 appeared in 2006.

Mark Ford was born in Kenya in 1962. He attended Oxford University and whilst there wrote his doctorate on John Ashbery. He has published a variety of works on nineteenth - and twentieth century American writing. He currently teaches in the English department at the University College, London. He has published two collections of poetry, Landlocked and Soft Sift. He has also written a critical biography of the French poet, playwright and novelist, Raymond Roussel, Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books.

"'Faber has a poetry list worth bragging about. What other publisher could conjure up a series like this?' The Times"