spoken word
Gary Snyder * NCTV interview 2008
12/Feb/2011
An wide-ranging interview with poet, essayist, environmental activist and philosopher Gary Snyder on NCTV: March 2, 2008. Lots of good conversation on his upbringing in Washington State and his current home in the Sierras.
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Gary Snyder * 3.5.09 * University of California - Berkeley
03/Dec/2010
A poetry reading by Gary Snyder on March 5, 2009 at the University of California - Berkeley.
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Photos copyright Christian Martin, 2009.
Gary Snyder * 3.12.87 * University of California - Berkeley
30/Jun/2010
A poetry reading by Gary Snyder on March 21, 1987 at the University of California - Berkeley. Enjoy!
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Tom Waits Tales
01/Jun/2010
Spoken word revelries from Tom Waits on his 2008 "Glitter & Doom" tour. Ain't nothin' else like Tom tellin' a tale...
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An interview with Tom Robbins * Bellingham, WA * 5.14.09
01/May/2010
I had the amazing opportunity to interview the legendary author and psychedelic spelunker Tom Robbins on stage at Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham, Washington on May 14, 2009. We gave a reading from his novel B is for Beer to a sold-out audience in the outdoor beer garden, accompanied by live music, skits and general revelrie.
At the end of the event, I joined Tom on stage for a conversation -- I had over 20 questions prepared and rehearsed, though got less than half-dozen out. He was particularly interested in me asking him "How did you get started as a writer?" This question set him up for a delectable riff involving Elvis, a dwarf in a green suit, a blonde-in-distress and secret underground lakes beneath Graceland. Photo by Scott Glackman!
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Gary Snyder * 5.27.09 * KUOW FM Seattle
26/Dec/2009
Podcast featuring Snyder interview on KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle, May 27, 2009 + Gary Snyder on Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" via NPR 2008 + "Poetry Off the Shelf" profile, June 2008
Poet Gary Snyder returns to Seattle for reading
By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter
Back before all the asphalt, the cars and the strip malls, this was a forested glade, where Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, would beat a path into the woods to his secret camp, to snug down with the quiet night, dreaming a fifth-grader's skinned-knee dreams.
One of America's most celebrated environmental writers and a lifelong conservationist, Snyder returned to his boyhood home Tuesday in Lake City. He is in town for a reading tonight at Benaroya Hall, part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures series.
Known for his writings imbued with sense of place and love of nature, Snyder reflected on how the local landscape has changed since he first explored its tangled woods as a boy, and how loving and knowing a place is the first step to preserving it.
Long before he grew into one of America's most famous Beat poets and was immortalized as Japhy Ryder, the fictional hero in Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums," before he put down roots in California and crisscrossed the Pacific, over and over, to study Buddhism in Japan, Snyder grew up here, living with his parents on a subsistence farm.click for more...
"Salmon Worship: Is It Wrong?" Pt. 2
06/Dec/2009
photos by Chrisitan Martin, copyright 2009
A fundraiser for the Liam Wood School of Fly Fishing and River Soldiering featuring David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie and Jeffrey Foucault; WWU * 9.25.09 * Bellingham, WA. Part two. Download by subscribing to Radio Free Fundi via links at the top of the sidebar, or stream below.
"Salmon Worship: Is It Wrong?" Pt. 1
14/Oct/2009
A fundraiser for the Liam Wood School of Fly Fishing and River Soldiering featuring David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie and Jeffrey Foucault; WWU * 9.25.09 * Bellingham, WA. Part one. Download by subscribing to Radio Free Fundi via links at the top of the sidebar.
Gary Snyder * 5.27.09 * Benaroya Hall, Seattle
13/Jul/2009
Gary Snyder visited Seattle in May 2009 at the invite of Seattle Arts & Lectures and North Cascades Institute (my daytime employer). Without any new collection of poetry or essays to promote, Snyder read from a variety of books, notes and a letters in a warm, intimate presentation at Benaroya Hall. Asked by the Institute to speak a bit about his time as a fire lookout in the North Cascades in the mid-1950s, Snyder reminisced and read several poems written during that time period, including "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout" and "The Late Snow and Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-four" -- two of my favorites.
Snyder also discusses the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, his Wobbly grandfather soapboxing in Pioneer Square, learning how to cut wood on a stump farm north of Seattle and Finnish anarchist newspapers published near the mouth of the Columbia River in this very special appearance on his home ground of western Washington State. Another podcast will be released in the near future with the question & answers & conversation he partook in after this reading.
More Gary Snyder, along with Jack Kerouac and Edward Abbey, at www.PodcastCafe.org/RadioFreeFundi. Feedback: djfundi@podcastcafe.org.
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Gary Snyder * 2.14.56 * Reed College
28/May/2009
Gary Snyder
Reading from “Myths & Texts,” "Riprap" and other poems at Reed College, Portland, OR
February 14, 1956
On February 13, 1956, Gary Snyder ’51 returned to Reed College with Allen Ginsberg for a poetry reading at Anna Mann Cottage. The next day, when the poets read again, the unscheduled event was recorded.
The reel of audiotape containing the Ginsberg reading, including his reading of “Howl,” was discovered in 2007 in Reed’s Hauser Library by John Suiter, a writer doing research for a biography of Snyder. Beside the reel was a note that contained disappointing news about the Snyder half of the reading: “Tape #1 Missing.”
Then, the morning after the “Howl” story appeared in Portland’s Oregonian, Steven Halpern ’85, a Portland-based photographer, showed up at the door of Reed’s special collections with an audiocassette copy of the missing tape. He had made the copy 25 years before as an English major doing research on Snyder’s friend and fellow-poet Lew Welch ’50. Tape 1 contained Snyder’s reading. Furthermore, Halpern had meticulously transferred from the original reel all the labeling information, which not only confirmed the exact date of the reading—February 14, 1956—but also included this note:
Poetry Reading made in the school year ’55–1956 at Reed College [when] Snyder was on a trip North from San Francisco that is briefly described in Dharma Bums trip with Allen Ginsberg. Snyder talks about his lookout experiences and early poetry writing.
Although the original reel has yet to surface, Halpern’s cassette is a superb copy—virtually equal in sound quality to the Ginsberg companion reel—and is more than twice as long, containing a lengthy selection of 46 Snyder poems.
--Copyright 2008, Reed College (for educational purposes only!)
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More info on this reading at The Oregonian and in this pdf story by Snyder scholar John Suiter.
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Edward Abbey : Freedom & Wilderness II
06/Apr/2009
I am currently packing up my backpack for a forthcoming trip to the redrock country of southern Utah. Been pouring over topo maps of Canyonlands National Park, consulting hiking books and making plans with my two compatriots who will join me in the desert from San Francisco and Taos. And, of course, been brushing up on my Edward Abbey, to get in the proper spirit of the desert. To that end, I thought it's as good a time as any to post the second half of his "Freedom & Wilderness" readings -- I up'd the first half right here, along with some background info on these recordings.
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Jack Kerouac's "Poetry for the Beat Generation"
06/Sep/2008
"A beautifully vivid set from Jack Kerouac -- one that has him reading his own music set to spare piano accompaniment by Steve Allen -- most of which was improvised for the set. The pairing of Kerouac and Allen seems an unlikely one, but it really works well here -- as Jack's quite relaxed in the studio, and really reads with a bit more feeling than usual -- really put at ease by Allen's surprisingly great piano lines, which never try to dominate, and mostly just tinkle lightly behind Kerouac's recitations."
--review from dustygrooves.com
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Edward Abbey : Freedom & Wilderness I
20/Jan/2008
"The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws."
--Edward Abbey, 1927-1989
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