How to start a poetry movement
I s'pose it was a cry for help, a cry for that family I no longer had, a belonging which I hadn't felt since I was a child. The image was more than merely intellectual; in my youthful enthusiasm and naivete, the idea of working within an adventurous group of freewheeling poets was downright seductive. In some ways it was even bigger than writing; it was a life-style, funded by the belief that one might live an inspired nomadic existence among other kindred spirits which was the very essence of poetry.
About this time, I met the expatriate New Zealand poet, eric beach (lower case in those days). eric, more than anyone else, had the biggest influence on me. He was the kind of guy you would've taken home to meet your mum, and your mum would've hated him. Which made him all the more attractive. The small, heavy-lidded poet with bed-sit eyes and long black eyebrows was infamous for never brushing his teeth, combing his hair, or changing his socks.
The first time I laid eyes on him was at the Montsalvat Poetry Festival in 1976. I'd been scheduled to read on the last afternoon - an outdoor reading, round a big Roman swimming pool. The light rain which had fallen all morning stopped, and the sun had come out. There were die-hard poetry-lovers everywhere, lounging round the pool, passing joints and hip flasks.
As I stepped up to the microphone, I noticed a guy in a black cape, surrounded by admirers, and surmised this was the poet everyone had been telling me about - the legendary eric beach. I was pleased he'd decided to come to my reading, and hopeful that I might be able to chat with him afterwards. As I was about to launch into my first poem, a rather unassuming bloke came out of the crowd and asked rather meekly if I'd mind if he accompanied me on harmonica. I gazed at the hot, seemingly brain-dead audience; noted the fact that the poet in the black cape had made himself comfortable beside the pool, and thought, why not?
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