Michael Yechiel Ha-Levi Horovitz (4 April 1935 – 7 July 2021) was a German-born British poet, editor, visual artist and translator who was a leading part of the

Beat Poetry The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatione ...

scene in the UK. In 1959, while still a student, he founded the "trail-blazing" literary periodical ''New Departures'', publishing experimental poetry, including the work of William S. Burroughs,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

and many other American and British beat poets. Horovitz read his own work at the 1965 landmark

International Poetry Incarnation The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 June 1965. Background In May 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, an independent bookstore in London's Charing Cross Road, and offered to read any ...

, at the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...

in London, deemed to have spawned the British underground scene, when an audience of more than 6,000 came to hear readings by the likes of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Gregory Corso and

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

. Characterised as an early champion of oral and jazz poetry, Horovitz in the following decades organised many "Live New Departures" events featuring poetry and jazz performances by a range of writers and musicians, including

Adrian Mitchell Adrian Mitchell FRSL (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's Ca ...

and

Stan Tracey Stanley William Tracey (30 December 1926 – 6 December 2013) was a British jazz pianist and composer, whose most important influences were Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Tracey's best known recording is the 1965 album '' Jazz Suite Inspi ...

. Horovitz also devised the Poetry Olympics festival, held for the first time in

Poets' Corner Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in the City of Westminster, London because of the high number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there. The first poe ...

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

in 1980, with participants over the years including

Linton Kwesi Johnson Linton Kwesi Johnson (born 24 August 1952), also known as LKJ, is a Jamaica-born, British-based dub poet and activist. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black one, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. His p ...

, John Cooper Clarke,

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

Eliza Carthy Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE (born 23 August 1975) is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson. Life and ca ...

and

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtua ...

Life and career

Horovitz was born in 1935 in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, then in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. He was the youngest of ten children who were brought to Britain in 1937 by their Jewish parents, Rosi (née Feist) and Dr Avraham Horovitz, both of whom were part of a network of European rabbinical families, and from London Dr Horovitz helped organise routes for other Jewish families to flee the Holocaust. Michael Horovitz attended William Ellis School in north London, and went on to read English at

Brasenose College, Oxford Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the m ...

, from 1954 to 1960. In 1959, while still a student, he founded the periodical ''New Departures'', publishing authors such as William S. Burroughs,

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and Tragicomedy, tr ...

, and Stevie Smith. Horovitz continued to edit ''New Departures'' for 50 years. He coordinated many poetry events such as "Live New Departures", Jazz Poetry Super Jams and the Poetry Olympics festivals. Though initially associated with the

British Poetry Revival "The British Poetry Revival" is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry. T ...

, Horovitz became known by his appearance at the

at the

on 11 June 1965, alongside

and

Alexander Trocchi Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi ( ; 30 July 1925 – 15 April 1984) was a Scottish novelist. Early life and career Trocchi was born in Glasgow to Alfred (formerly Alfredo) Trocchi, a music-hall performer of Italian parentage, and Anni ...

. In 1969,

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1970, Ginsberg characterised him as a "Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard". In 1971, Horovitz published ''The Wolverhampton Wanderer, an epic of Britannia, in twelve books, with a resurrection & a life for poetry united'', with an original dustjacket by Peter Blake. The book is a collection of British artists of the period, with illustrations and photographs by Peter Blake, Michael Tyzack, Adrian Henri, Patrick Hughes, Gabi Nasemann, Paul Kaplan, John Furnival,

Bob Godfrey Roland Frederick Godfrey MBE (27 May 1921 – 21 February 2013),Pete Morgan,

Jeff Nuttall Jeffrey Addison Nuttall (8 July 1933 – 4 January 2004) was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of l ...

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

, as well as Horovitz and others. It is a visual and literary elegy to the culture surrounding

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

up to the 1960s, celebrating not only

Wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

and its supporters, but also

Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostl ...

, Spurs, and teams from the North. Horovitz's ''Growing Up: Selected Poems and Pictures, 1951–79'' was published by

Allison & Busby Allison & Busby (A & B) is a publishing house based in London established by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby in 1967. The company has built up a reputation as a leading independent publisher. Background Launching as a publishing company in Ma ...

in 1979. In 2007, Horovitz published ''A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium'', described by

D. J. Taylor David John Taylor (born 1960) is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his biography of Geo ...

in ''The Independent'' as "a deeply felt clarion-call from the radical underground", and by

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and polit ...

as "A true scrapbook and songbook of the grave new world". Horovitz stood for election as

Oxford Professor of Poetry The Professor of Poetry is an academic appointment at the University of Oxford. The chair was created in 1708 by an endowment from the estate of Henry Birkhead. The professorship carries an obligation to lecture, but is in effect a part-time p ...

in 2010 (supported by

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, ...

). Contributing to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'', Horovitz wrote then:

I would most likely pitch some of my lectures around the legacies of my closest comrades in the broad continuum of poetry, from David and Solomon to
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
,
Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...
to
Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock an ...
,
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...
to
Lead Belly Huddie William Ledbetter (; January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk sta ...
, medieval troubadours to the beat generation,
Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculos ...
to
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
and Blake to Beckett.

In the same article he emphasised the connections between art media, stage and page poetry, and his wish to extend "communal paths my bardmobile has struck over the last five decades." In the event. Horovitz came second, in a field of 11, to Geoffrey Hill. In January 2011, Horovitz contributed to an eBook collection of political poems entitled ''Emergency Verse – Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State'', edited by Alan Morrison. An eccentric and colourful part of the UK poetry scene, Horovitz fronted the William Blake Klezmatrix band (his hero being the 19th-century poet and painter

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...

) in which he played the "anglo-saxophone", an updated and extended eunuch flute of his own devising. To celebrate Horovitz's 80th birthday, a limited-edition album was produced of a 2013 recording of his poem sequence "Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues", on which he is accompanied by

Paul Weller Paul John Weller (born John William Weller; 25 May 1958) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Weller achieved fame with the punk rock/ new wave/mod revival band the Jam (1972–1982). He had further success with the blue-eyed soul mu ...

Graham Coxon Graham Leslie Coxon (born 12 March 1969) is an English musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and painter who came to prominence as a founding member of the rock band Blur. As the group's lead guitarist and secondary vocalist, Cox ...

and

Personal life and death

Horovitz was married to the English poet

Frances Horovitz Frances Margaret Horovitz ( Hooker; 13 February 1938 – 2 October 1983) was an English poet and broadcaster. Life and work Frances Margaret Hooker (who adopted and wrote under the surname of her first husband, Michael Horovitz) was born in Wa ...

(1938–1983), their son Adam Horovitz (born 1971) is also a poet, performer and journalist. Michael Horovitz's home was in

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road Ma ...

, London. In his later years, it became a notoriously chaotic repository of his personal papers and archives. "Indoor skip it may seem to you, but compared to

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

's studio, my pad here is Versailles", he said in a 2010 ''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' interview. Horovitz was a loyal supporter of

Arsenal Football Club Arsenal Football Club, commonly referred to as Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Islington, London, England. Arsenal plays in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. The club has won 13 league titles (incl ...

. Horovitz died at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, on 7 July 2021, at the age of 86. He was also recognised for his artwork and at the time of his death a two-week exhibition of his "Bop Art paintings, collages and picture poems" was opening at the

Chelsea Arts Club The Chelsea Arts Club is a private members' club at 143 Old Church Street in Chelsea, London with a membership of over 3,800, including artists, sculptors, architects, writers, designers, actors, musicians, photographers, and filmmakers. The club ...

(6–25 July).

Publications

Books

* ''Declaration'' (1963) * ''Strangers'' (with Maria Simon; 1965) * ''Nude Lines for Larking in Present Night Soho'' (Goliard Press, 1965) * ''High Notes from when I Was Rolling in Moss'' (Latimer Press, 1966) * ''Poetry for the People'' (Latimer Press, 1966)Sicher, Efraim
Michael Horovitz (born 1935)
in ''Beyond Marginality: Anglo-Jewish Literature After the Holocaust'', Suny Press, 2012, pp. 217–218 * ''Bank Holiday: a New Testament for the Love Generation'' (Latimer Press, 1967) * ''Love Poems: Nineteen Poems of Love, Lust and Spirit'' (New Departures, 1971) * ''The Wolverhampton Wanderer'' (Latimer, 1971; ) * ''Growing Up: Selected Poems & Pictures 1951–79'' (Allison and Busby, 1979) * ''Midsummer Morning Jog Log'' (with Peter Blake; Five Seasons Press, 1986, ) * ''Wordsounds and Sightlines: New and Selected Poems'' (New Departures, 1994, ) * ''A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium'' (New Departures, 2007, )

As editor

* ''Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain'', New Departures 1-24 (Penguin Books, 1969, ) * ''A Celebration of & for Frances Horovitz (1938–1983)'' (New Departures, 1984, ) * ''The POW! (Poetry Olympics Weekend) Anthology'' * ''The POP! (Poetry Olympics Party) Anthology'' * ''The POM! (Poetry Olympics Marathon) Anthology'' (New Departures, 2001, ) * ''The POT! (Poetry Olympics Twenty05) Anthology'' (New Departures, 2007, ) * ''Jeff Nuttall's Wake on Paper: A Keepsake Anthology of the Life, Work and Play of a Polymath Extraordinaire'' * ''Grandchildren of Albion: An Illustrated Anthology of Voices and Visions of Younger Poets in Britain'' (New Departures, 1992, )

As translator

* ''Europa'' by

Anatol Stern Anatol Stern (24 October 1899 in Warsaw – 19 October 1968 in Warsaw) was a Polish poet, writer and art critic. Born 24 October 1899 to an assimilated family of Jewish ancestry, Stern studied at the Polish Studies Faculty of the University ...

(with

Stefan Themerson Stefan Themerson (25 January 1910 – 6 September 1988) was a Polish writer of children's literature, poet and inventor of Semantic Poetry, novelist, script writer filmmaker, composer and philosopher. He wrote in at least three languages. Wit ...

) * ''The Egghead Republic'' by

Arno Schmidt Arno Schmidt (; 18 January 1914 – 3 June 1979) was a German author and translator. He is little known outside of German-speaking areas, in part because his works present a formidable challenge to translators. Although he is not one of the p ...

()

On art

* '' Alan Davie'' (1963) * ''Michael Horovitz Goes Visual'' * ''Michael Horovitz: Bop Paintings, Collages & Picture-Poems''

References

External links

*
Poetry Olympics official website

John May interviews Horovitz: part 1
(audio). TheGeneralist.co.uk
John May interviews Horovitz: part 2
(audio). TheGeneralist.co.uk
"A Late Beat Flowering: Interview with Michael Horovitz"
in the ''London Student'', 2012 * John-Paul Pryor
"Michael Horovitz: Grandfather of Albion"
''Dazed'', March 2010 * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Horovitz, Michael 1935 births 2021 deaths 20th-century British male writers 20th-century British poets 21st-century British male writers 21st-century British poets Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford Artists from London Beat Generation poets British Jewish writers British male poets German–English translators Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Jewish poets Officers of the Order of the British Empire Writers from Frankfurt Writers from London