Posted on 28/08/2013 by admin

FLO to the Beat
Homage to the Beat Generation
This year’s international Festival of Literature in Orllan (FLO), Kosovo, is paying homage to the Beat Generation with the British Beat poet, Michael Horovitz, topping the bill.
Horovitz, poet, publisher and anglo-saxophonist in his late 70s, is widely considered to be one of the last great beat writers in the international wake of Beat Generation founders Jack Kerouac, and Horovitz’s subsequent buddies Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
His Ballad of the Nocturnal Commune was performed at the beginning of the year at the Royal Albert Hall with Paul Weller and Blur’s Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, and is Side A of a Single vinyl recording recently released along with an LP by this quartet, from Gearbox Records.
It was at the Albert Hall in 1965 that Horovitz came to prominence when he co-organised the First International Poetry Incarnation, featuring the leading Beat poets from the US and the UK, a megagig whose highspots were captured in Peter Whitehead’s documentary Wholly Communion.


Before that, in 1959, Michael had founded New Departures, an anthology series that is seen as one of the catalysts of the 60s counter culture. According to the Times Literary Supplement in 1960, it was “The most substantial avant-garde magazine in Great Britain”.
“Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard” – this is how Allen Ginsberg introduced Horovitz to New York in 1970, whilst Martin Amis described him as “a dreamer, a maverick … transmedial crusader”.
At FLO, Michael will accompany and be accompanied by poet and singer-songwriter-guitarist Vanessa Vie on original poems and songs, as well as some by their fellow troubadours.
(http://axisagencies.com/vanessa-vie/moonwalk-accompanied-by-michael-horovitz/)
In the past Michael has worked and played with artists and writers such as Paul McCartney, Lenny Bruce, Dudley Moore, Ornette Coleman, Spike Milligan, Joe Strummer, David Hockney, Peter Blake and Patti Smith.
A Beat poetry selection will also be read during the festival.
This year’s FLO features an impressive list of authors and musicians from Kosova, Macedonia, Albania and Sweden including Luan Starova, Primo Shllaku, Visar Zhiti, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Agron Tufa, Tina Persson, Adem Gashi, Milazim Krasniqi, Lulzim Haziri, Naime Beqiraj, Alban Bala, Ilire Zajmi, Fatmir Sylejmani, Fadil Bajraj, Imer Topanica, Jona Merjo, Shpëtim Selmani, Irena Gjoni, Elisabeth Gowing, Robert Wilton, Teuta Skenderi and Agim Gashi. Hektor Gjurgjiali of 403, a well known ’80s Kosovar band, and Gillespie, an underground rock’n'roll band, will both make rare appearances.
FLO was launched in 2011 by the Batllava Lake to complement the Kosovar and regional cultural calendar with a unique event. In the first two editions FLO managed to gather together well known writers and artists from Kosovo and the region, who took part in daily sessions with the audience, as well as writers from UK, Cyprus, Japan and Syria.
In order to attract new audiences to the literary events, FLO organisers have combined literature with music so the festival offers live music performances as well and its first two editions featured rare unplugged or semi-acoustic sessions from local and international acts, a real treat for the audience.