SF celebrates Kaufman centenary

Beat, Surrealist, jazz poet

WE WAIT FOR decades for a centenary or two to come along and then those special hundred-year moments seem to turn up in a rush. At least that’s how it feels as a line-up of significant Beat Generation commemorations is about to hit our diaries, including Ginsberg and Cassady centennials in 2026.

After Kerouac’s hundredth in 2022 and with those significant three-digit birthdays of Ferlinghetti (2019) and Burroughs (2014) fast disappearing in the rearview mirror, the poet and jazz performer Bob Kaufman, sometimes referred to as ‘the black Rimbaud’, is the next figure to earn that celebratory treatment.

In a three-day run this week, Kaufman’s centenary will be the subject of a series of events in San Francisco. From April 17th to 19th, the man, regarded as both Beat and Surrealist, born on April 18th, 1925, and who died aged 60 in 1986, will be the focus of various memorials in the city that became his home from 1958.

On Thursday, April 17th at 7pm an audience will gather at Live Worms Gallery with opening words by Will Alexander to be followed by some rare film clips including a screening of Heartbeat by Will Combs plus a 1974 piece created by Horace Washington as Kaufman returned after a period of silence. Both directors are scheduled to appear.

The next day, Friday, April 18th, there will be a 5pm reading at the legendary Golden Sardine to be followed by a gathering at SunnyCo Studio at 7pm, where Raymond Foye and Tate Swindell will discuss the Collected Poems of Bob Kaufmann, moderated by John Geluardi, with a supporting contribution from devorah major, San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate.

Finally, on Saturday April 19th, at 6pm at the Lion’s Den, there will be a group reading of Kaufman’s Second April, with additional words and music by Eric Mingus.

Tate Swindell, one of the celebration’s participating organisers, also mentions a special tribute in print: ‘The talented Nicholas James Whittington has produced another stellar letterpress broadside for the occasion, a limited edition of 100 of Bob's Bonsai Poems. All sales of the broadside go directly to Robert Parker Kaufman.’