Michael Horovitz

Michael Horovitz (born 1935) is an English poet, artist and translator.

Life and career
Michael Horovitz was the youngest of ten children who were brought to England from Nazi Germany by their parents, both of whom were part of a network of European-rabbinical families. Michael studied at Brasenose College, Oxford from 1954 to 1960.

In 1959 he founded the New Departures publications while still a student, publishing William S. Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, and Stevie Smith. He continued to edit it for fifty years, coordinating many Live New Departures, Jazz Poetry SuperJams and Poetry Olympics festivals. Though initially associated with the British Poetry Revival, Horovitz became widely known on his appearance at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall on June 11, 1965, alongside Allen Ginsberg and Alexander Trocchi. In 1969 Penguin published his Children of Albion anthology. Introducing him to New York in 1970, Allen Ginsberg characterized him as a "Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard".

In 1971 he published The Wolverhampton Wanderer, an epic of Britannia, in twelve books, with a resurrection & a life for poetry united, with an original dustjacket by Peter Blake. The book is a collection of British artists of the period with illustrations and photographs by Michal Tyzack, Peter Blake, Adrian Henri, Patrick Hughes, Gabi Nasemann, Michael Horovitz, Paul Kaplan, John Furnival, Bob Godfrey, Pete Morgan, Jeff Nuttall, David Hockney and others. It is, among other things, a visual and literary elegy to the culture surrounding association football up to the 1960s, celebrating not only Wolves and its supporters, but also Arsenal, Spurs, and legendary teams from the North. Growing Up: Selected Poems and Pictures, 1951-'79 was published by Allison & Busby in 1979.

In 2007, he published A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium, described by D.J. Taylor in The Independent as "a deeply felt clarion-call from the radical underground", and by Tom Stoppard as "A true scrapbook and songbook of the grave new world". In January 2011 Horovitz contributed to an eBook collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State edited by Alan Morrison.

Horovitz stood for election as Oxford Professor of Poetry in 2010, but came second, out of eleven, to Geoffrey Hill.

Michael Horovitz currently fronts the William Blake Klezmatrix band.

Family
He was married to the English poet Frances Horovitz (1938–83); their son Adam Horovitz (b. 1971) is also a poet, performer and journalist.

Publications

 * Strangers (with Maria Simon),
 * Nude Lines For Larking In Present Night Soho
 * High Notes
 * Poetry for the people
 *  Bank Holiday: a New Testament for the Love Generation (1967)
 * Love Poems: Nineteen Poems of Love, Lust and Spirit
 *  The Wolverhampton Wanderer (1971)
 * Growing Up: Selected Poems & Pictures 1951-1979 (1979)
 *  Midsummer Morning Jog Log (with Peter Blake),
 * A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium
 * Wordsounds and Sightlines: New and Selected Poems (1994)
 * Grandchildren of Albion

Edited

 * Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, New Departures 1-24 (1969)
 * Poetry Olympics Anthologies 1-3
 * A celebration of & for Frances Horovitz (1938–1983), 1984
 * The POW! (Poetry Olympics Weekend) Anthology
 * The POP! (Poetry Olympics Party) Anthology
 *  The POM! (Poetry Olympics Marathon) Anthology
 * The POT! (Poetry Olympics Twenty05) Anthology
 * Jeff Nuttall's Wake on Paper: A Keepsake Anthology of the Life, Work and Play of a Polymath Extraordinaire
 * Grandchildren of Albion (1992)

Translated

 * Bartók by Gyula Illyés (with Paul Zador),
 * Poems by Raoul Hausmann
 *  Europa by Anatol Stern (with Stefan Themerson)
 * The Egghead Republic by Arno Schmidt
 * Poems by Andrei Voznesensky (with Richard McKane).

On art

 * Alan Davie (1963)
 * Michael Horovitz Goes Visual
 *  Michael Horovitz: Bop Paintings, Collages & Picture-Poems