Michael Horovitz

Michael W. Horovitz OBE (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 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 and many other American and British beat poets.^[2] Horovitz read his own work at the 1965 landmark International Poetry Incarnation, at the Royal Albert Hall 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.^[1]

Characterised as an early champion of oral and jazz poetry,^[3] 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 and Stan Tracey.^[4] Horovitz also devised the Poetry Olympics festival, held for the first time in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in 1980, with participants over the years including Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke, Paul McCartney, Eliza Carthy and Damon Albarn.^[4][5]