> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Beat goes on - URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-1725jsp/ - Published: 2004-02-12T00:02:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-04-17T11:12:51.000Z - Author: Michael Horovitz - Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:08, #ImagesUploaded Allen Ginsberg introduced Michael Horovitz to New York in 1970 as a “popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard”. Martin Amis later praised him as “a dreamer, a maverick … transmedial crusader”. He is also known as a “far-out, free-range or spontaneous bop troubadour”, and is widely considered to be one of the last great [Beat poets](http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/b/beats21.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) from the generation of Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg himself. While still a student in 1959, [Michael Horovitz](http://www.growinglifestyle.com/psearch/Author/Book/Michael%5FHorovitz/index.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) founded [*New Departures*](http://www.connectotel.com/PoetryOlympics?ref=opendemocracy.net), which became an influential avant-garde literary magazine in Britain. Across the next four decades, he published writers and creators of the calibre of William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, John Cage, and Stevie Smith. His Poetry Olympics, an annual event launched at Westminster Abbey in 1980 and [featuring](http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm%5F393996.html?menu&ref=opendemocracy.net) work from Ted Hughes to Paul McCartney, are legendary; while his *POW!* anthologies present a potent mix of jazz poetry, lyric and verse. Recent contributors include Patience Agbabi, Heathcote Williams, John Hegley, and the pop-rock musicians Damon Albarn and Paul Weller. He is currently completing a view of modern Britain called *A New Waste Land*. **Michael Horovitz: two poems** ![Michael Horovitz by David Hockney](https://www.opendemocracy.net/content/files/2026/04/horovitz-by-hockney_N1FMosz-1776424226350.jpg) Michael Horovitz by David Hockney *Michael Horovitz by David Hockney* **in Paris** …arise at dawn from foam rubber blue pillow pink blanket piss flush brush teeth – miss the feel of rush mats underfoot as in London – but never mind that – I may be a Londoner but this is Paris – down the stairs jumping 3-at-a-time out to the forecourt – ‘Good- Day *Sun*shine’ – ask young girls – student couples – restaurateurs opening their doors for breakfast – for directions – fart belch buy croissant & apple turnover – munch in streets (‘a small turn- over’) – read messages on walls wind way through streets wide & narrow – just noticing mosaic of cobbles on streets – historic architectures of church & lion’s mouths and classic statues – bleach & iron smocked nuns in convent vestibules – flamboyant sexy walks of Paris business-ladies lines from the past – ‘A *l’ombre* *des arbres et jeunes filles*’ – fall on grass in Luxembourg Gardens tall trees & voices in them laugh & rustle their skirts & leaves – so young – so green ‘*Les lauriers sont coupés’* – the garden of love open & seen – flowers toss their heads in the breeze – young lovers swing their hips – I sneeze for the earth is full of sky today – & the sky replete with sun – & birds quietly jingling – their beaks still snatching the last shreds of night plying darker lines of melody across the dazzling noonday light… (taken from *Wordsounds & Sightlines* (1994), with kind permission of the author) **For Felix Mendelssohn** What a wonderful life it must have been if you were Felix Mendelssohn – rediscovering Bach and bringing him to wide public appreciation, adored by protégés like Robert and Clara Schumann, getting seasick on a whirl round the storm-tossed Hebrides, then stepping ashore and dashing off Fingal’s Cave, and reprised at every second wedding all over the Christian world For your Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream – how I’d love to have been him though, come to think of it – if I had been him, I’d be dead by now … then again, perhaps I was Felix Mendelssohn in another incarnation closed to me – till now. Listening to his Songs Without Words, I realise that if I am indeed anything like a composer, I have to stop talking and get on with the music. (January 2004) ![self portrait](https://www.opendemocracy.net/content/files/2026/04/self-portrait_9F3odod-1776424226394.jpg) self portrait Michael Horovitz (with Frieda Hughes) reads poetry for St Valentine’s Day at the National Portrait Gallery, London: Saturday 14 February, 3-4 pm, admission free. He also performs in *The March of the Beats* at Kerouac’s Poetic Cabaret, The White Swan, 13 Blackheath Road, London SE10: Thursday 19 February, 8.30pm. Email: [jcjazzman@yahoo.co.uk](mailto:jcjazzman@yahoo.co.uk).