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BIG
SUR MARATHON READING
REPORTS
FR:
LOWELL
LAWRENCE
CARRADINI: It was a beautiful day in Lowell. We had
a stage, with the soundboard from where the city puts on
its summer concert series. Podium, with 18 x 24 foam board
mounted with a poster, set up facing the green-adjacent
to the commemorative itself. There were several large canopies,
and a central stage for readers and musicians like Empty
House Cooperative, joined by the members of Come, from Kicks,
Joy, Darkness.
Close
to 300 people congregated at Kerouac Park a great lineup
read Big Sur. Readers included, Paul Marion; Meg; Myself;
Henry Ferrini; [you know about us] - current LCK!, VP, Phil
Chaput; Willie Alexander (musician who co-wrote score for
Lowell Blues); Roger Brunelle (French voice of Lowell Blues),
John Wieners (Beat-era poet mentioned with selected poems
in Beat Book and Portable Beat Reader, as well as in the
Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Poets, and a number of other
significant anthologies); LCK! board member, Richard Hyatt;
musician, Chris Brokaw of Come; poet, and park supervisor,
Richard Scott; Charles Shively, poet, scholar, educator,
authored significant work on Whitman, friend of Wieners;
Lee Kidd and Jesse Piaia of Squawk Coffee House, Harvard
Sq, Cambridge; poet, Boku Williams, who studied with educator
and chair of the Beat Attitudes program at U. Mass., Lowell,
Dr. Hilary Holladay; current LCK! board member, Ellie Lorrigan;
Lowell Heritage State Park summer intern, Brian McCarthy;
current LCK! Secretary, and event coordinator for The Sugar
Shack in Lowell, Steve Albert; poet, fiction writer, Vernon
Frazer who joined us from E. Hartford, CT; poet, and one
of the editors of the very fine poetry journal The Cafe'
Review, who joined us from Maine, Wayne Atherton; LCK! board
member Ellie Lorrigan; Lowell Heritage State Park Summer
Intern Brian McCarthy; founding editor of Dharma Beat magazine
and former president of LCK!, Mark Hemenway; former president
of LCK!, and author of Kerouac's Nashua Connection, Steve
Edington.
The
event opened with Cactus Highway, who appear on the LCK!
tribute CD, Spirit: A Tribute To Jack Kerouac. Jim Dunleavey,
who is featured on the CD, honored us with a couple of songs,
and the evening closed out with Typhoon Ferri.
What
a wonderful day it was!
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