‘Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.’ ―Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poetry as Insurgent Art
On 22nd February 2021 poet, playwright, publisher, and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away one month before his 102nd birthday.
From his radical bookstore in San Francisco, City Lights, countercultural icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti challenged and changed America to become a more open-minded place. He never stopped challenging the status quo and continued his work until his death.
Ferlinghetti was an active participant at poetry readings. He often performed to jazz music alongside other well-known associates of the Beat Generation including Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg. Although he didn’t identify as a member of the Beats, Ferlinghetti will always be associated with the movement.
Despite an extensive education and a talent for translating French literature, Ferlinghetti appreciated the vernacular and sought to bring poetry out of elite lecture theatres and onto the streets. City Lights was revolutionary from the start, being the first US bookstore to publish all-paperback issues to make poetry accessible and affordable at a time when paperbacks were still considered a low-brow format.
In 1956, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems as part of the paperback Pocket Poets series. He was put on trial and later exonerated for publishing the book which the authorities feared would corrupt America’s youth, due to its frank references to gay sex. This brought Howl the attention that transformed the work from underground poetry to best-seller, launching a cultural revolution. This was the defining moment that cemented City Lights’ reputation for being a hub for progressives in the bay area.
City Lights soon became a centre for activism; Ferlinghetti dedicated much of his time to humanitarian and political causes. Notably, organising San Francisco’s Veterans for Peace march against the Vietnam war in 1962. He was also a featured speaker at the ‘human-be-in’, an event that launched 1967’s Summer of Love at the start of the Hippie Movement. His hatred for war stemmed from his experience in Nagasaki soon after the atomic bomb had been detonated.
Meanwhile in London, Ferlinghetti’s legacy was expanding across the pond. A few London publishers took inspiration from City Lights to create their own space for exhibitions, experimental literature, and poetry readings. Subsequently, members of the City Lights team came over to establish London’s answer to the expanding alternative literary scene. The bookshop, Better Books on Charing Cross Road, soon attracted notable guests including The Beatles, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and Donovan. Ferlinghetti was the heart of this movement that culminated in the International Poetry Incarnation in 1965. This revolutionary poetry reading at the Royal Albert Hall brought the alternative scene to mainstream audiences, forever changing the way poetry was experienced in the UK.
City Lights has continued to nurture freethinkers ever since. Having published almost 300 books since opening in 1955. From autobiographical Queer by William Burroughs to recently released Build Bridges, Not Walls by ToddMiller, City Lights is still contributing to literature, and humanity, through every cutting-edge page. As well as running a successful bookshop and publishing house, Ferlinghetti sold over 1 million copies of his own books during his lifetime. His third novel, Little Boy was published as he turned one hundred.
Ferlinghetti gave an enduring gift to literature, and his legacy serves as a reminder that art has the power to create change and inspire us to keep pushing for a fairer, more compassionate world.
