Word made flesh 1965 / Flesh made word 2015

Tag: Chet Weise

ReIncarnation Biographies #18: Duke Garwood

Duke Garwood

Duke Garwood

The eighteenth person in our series of introductions to performers taking part in International Poetry ReIncarnation at the Roundhouse in Camden on 30th May 2015 is the musician Duke Garwood.

You should know Duke Garwood. Born in 1969, this London-based multi-instrumentalist has been around a fair while. He has contributed to records by The Orb and worked with Mark Lanegan, amongst many others. His soulful, stripped-bare sound has been under your nose this entire time. Until now, he’s been the mysterious figure in tales where Mexican gangs forced tequila down his throat, a ghost-like presence at gatherings of some the world’s biggest rock stars-turned-his closest friends, and an unassuming continent-hopper trying to find his way in the world. But the release of his new album Heavy Love earlier this year should change that.

Navigating from the mouth of the Medway to Thailand’s bar scene where he played harp alongside Georgie Fame’s son Tristan and Yngwie Malmsteen’s keyboard-player before focusing on the guitar, Garwood’s travels extend to the mean streets of Paris and back to Hackney’s squatlands in which he soothed “drunken misery” and grappling with newfound fatherhood by playing his own “mad kind of blues”.

At the International Poetry ReIncarnation, he will be blending his music with the poetry of Janaka Stucky and Chet Weise. This is not to be missed!

My brother Duke is the most soulacious soul man I know. He’s always cut his own groove and it’s been my honour to play with him so many times.” Seasick Steve

“As close to Heaven as you can get with a guitar.” Josh T. Pearson

Get your tickets for the evening’s star-laden performance here: The International Poetry ReIncarnation

Here’s the video for the title song from Duke’s latest album, Heavy Love

ReIncarnation Biographies #17: Chet Weise

Chet Weise

Chet Weise

The seventeenth person in our series of introductions to performers taking part in International Poetry ReIncarnation at the Roundhouse in Camden on 30th May 2015 is the musician, poet and editor Chet Weise.

Chet Weise is the chief editor of Third Man Books (Nashville, Tennessee). His poetry appears in Copper Nickel, Poems & Plays, the anthology Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End Days, and elsewhere. Also a musician, Weise recorded and toured internationally with groups The Quadrajets and the Immortal Lee County Killers “We toured the UK extensively with the Immortal Lee County Killers,” says Chet, “and appeared on John Peel’s show twice. He even took us out to dinner – such a cool dude!”

In 2008, Chet was banned from Canada.

Third Man Books

Third Man Books Final_Black copyMulti-Grammy-winning musician Jack White, along with Ben Swank (co-founders of Third Man Records), and Chet Weise (co-founder, Third Man Books) all shared the stage in their respective rock bands in the not-so-distant past. With the August 2014 release of Third Man Books’ first literary publication, Language Lessons: Volume I, a multimedia box set of prose, poetry, and music, Third Man Books launched for the future. Echoing Third Man Records’ reverence for music and commitment to innovation, Third Man Books is dedicated to publishing the best in language with the same level of respect, skill, and audaciousness. TMR & TMB: Where your turntable’s not dead & your page still turns.

Get your tickets for the evening’s star-laden performance here: The International Poetry ReIncarnation

Here’s a YouTube video of Chet’s Peel session with the Immortal Lee County Killers

Liberty, Equality, Poetry

mhandginsbergAdam Horovitz reflects on the impact of the International Poetry Incarnation in 1965 and looks forward to the celebratory party for it.

I have spent most of my life aware of the International Poetry Incarnation, which took place in the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, very nearly 50 years ago. My father, Michael Horovitz, helped organise it, so of course I was going to be exposed of it. Growing up, I knew some of the poets. They were often about, in our house or at events, being genial and strange and merely a part of my metaphysical furniture.

For a long time, the 1965 Incarnation was a big poetry gig in the sky that people talked about and that I accepted as just another impressive thing that fathers do. As I have grown older, however, and become more interested in poetry in my own right, it has been hitting ever more forcefully home to me what a turning point this Incarnation, this 1965 happening, was.

Annie Whitehead

Annie Whitehead

Poetry in Britain was somewhat in the doldrums in the 1950s, as far as it being a public art went. It tended to sit in small rooms in universities and libraries and speak to and of itself. With my father’s generation – people like Adrian Mitchell, Christopher Logue, Pete Brown – poetry picked itself up and went running around the country talking to people who didn’t expect poetry to come leaping out of hedgerows at them. It went charging up to the Edinburgh Festival and touring through towns and cities with musicians and actors and playwrights in tow. Poetry began to listen, and to sing out in different rhythms. It offered up a party where only drier forms of symposia had appeared available before. Continue reading