The spirit of a unique happening almost 50 years ago which saw more than 7,000 people flock to the Albert Hall to listen to poetry will be recaptured at an event at the Roundhouse on Saturday 30 May featuring two of the original participants. Michael Horovitz and Pete Brown took part in the International Poetry Incarnation on 11 June 1965 along with American Beat poets Allen Ginbserg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, plus Alexander Trocchi, Adrian Mitchell, Harry Fainlight, Christopher Logue, Ernst Jandl, John Esam, Anselm Hollo, George Macbeth, Simon Vinkenoog, Paulo Leonii, Daniel Richter, Spike Hawkins, and Tom McGrath. For the Roundhouse ReIncarnation Horovitz and Brown will be joined on stage by poets such as Patience Agbabi, Francesca Beard, Malika Booker, John Cooper Clarke, Salena Godden, John Hegley, Elvis McGonagall and Adam Horovitz, plus actors and musicians.

There will be reminiscences of the original occasion in a panel discussion, and a rare screening of the Peter Whitehead film, Wholly Communion, that recorded the event earlier in the day. In an interview with Write Out Loud to mark his 80th birthday in April, Michael Horovitz said:  “A quorum of the poets who read at Albert Hall that evening had met just before and co-composed a manifesto for it, including the line from Ginsberg: ‘You are not alone’. The testimony of many of the 7,500-plus who were there confirms this, in that a goodly fraction of them had hardly been aware that they were not the only ones cranking out little mags on duplicators and presenting little poetry and music gigs from Falmouth to Northumberland, to northern Scotland, western Ireland and all over Wales.”

The Times Literary Supplement concluded afterwards that the event had made “literary history”. In a foreword to a book on the film Wholly Communion, Alexis Lykiard said the event “demonstrated that poetry should and could stir people … no one knew what to expect.” He concluded: “They may have faltered or shocked: the audience may have misunderstood them; but certainly the varied efforts of poet and audience to join one another in a communion of the Word will not soon be forgotten by those who were present.”  

Background: Write Out Loud interviews Michel Horovitz