Poet Michael McClure

Michael McClure’s first poetry reading was a big one.

It was 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Kenneth Rexroth was the host, and five young poets from his weekly salon — Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen — performed to an exuberant crowd that included Jack Kerouac. “Some people say it was the beginning of the Beat Generation,” says McClure. “Some people don’t.”

Since then, McClure has performed for a wide variety of audiences: a crowd of 30,000 people at the Human Be-In event in Golden Gate Park; the caged lions at the San Francisco Zoo; on tour alongside Doors’ keyboard player Ray Manzarek. His career in poetry has spanned five decades, and now he brings that experience to our doorstep as part of the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival (CISWF).

McClure’s first visit to Calgary coincided with the One Yellow Rabbit production of his play, Josephine the Mouse Singer, which featured none other than CISWF artistic director Sheri-D Wilson. “At the time, Calgary was in the midst of some kind of depression,” he says. “Visiting artists were put up in business offices downtown. It was pretty unique.” He pauses. “I also liked that dinosaur museum.”

Widely credited as a key member of the Beat Generation and the hippie counterculture movement, McClure’s work often tackles social and environmental issues. “I don’t plan it,” he says. “I don’t plan to be an anti-political writer, an environmental writer, to write a book of love poems. These are things we do because we must, because we’re inspired. I write about what I’m living, and I’ve been living in one endless war. First it was the Second World War, then Korea, the war against the environment, Vietnam and now... I can’t help but comment, I can’t not write about it.”

In addition to his poetry, McClure is also a playwright, and his work was instrumental in the fight for freedom of expression in the United States. His Obie Award-winning play, The Beard, became notorious in early performances when its actors — portraying Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow in an exploration of “meat politics” — were arrested for obscenity and lewd conduct. After winning their court case in San Francisco, the play moved on to Los Angeles.

“Fourteen nights in a row, after every performance, the actor and actress were arrested,” says McClure. “After the play, there would be a standing ovation, and you’d see the police go backstage. The entire audience would stay to see the police lead the actors back across the stage, and then give another standing ovation!”

After years of struggle, McClure and his contemporaries made great strides in freedom of expression for the arts, but he believes that modern media still have an uphill climb. “Just a few companies form what so many people in [the Unites States] are capable of thinking, because they have to work with the information they’re given,” says McClure. “Often, as poets, we’re just telling people what they already believe, assuring them that somebody will stand on a stage and say it out loud.”

McClure has two public appearances this week. First, there’s Get Intimate with Michael McClure, a candid conversation about language, sound, the Beat generation and more at the University of Calgary (Craigie Hall D100) on April 21, 7:30 p.m. Then, he joins Asani, Patrick Lane and Sheri-D Wilson for the Earth-to-Earth Day Gala, the fifth event in the 2008 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, at the W.R. Castell Central Library (616 Macleod Tr. S.E.) on April 22, 8 p.m., $15 admission.