“The original outlaw poet.” -Michelle Tea 

WHY WE SHOULD CARE:  Heroine, revolutionary, feminist and poetess of the Beat generation, Diane Di Prima is a living example of woman as artist. A renaissance creator most well-known for her poetry, she spent the sixties in New York, writing, publishing, and founding the New York Poets Theatre, the Poets Press, and editing literary magazine The Floating Bear. In the male-dominated world of beat poetry, she emerged as one of the most important artists of a generation. She became a part of the hippie movement, joining Timothy Leary’s psychedelic community in upstate New York, before relocating to California later in life. Her life is chronicled in 13 works of poetry and prose.  

THREE WORKS WE ADMIRE: 

Revolutionary Letters
Published by City Lights Books, the book is a collection of poems written and performed during Di Prima’s years as an activist in New York. First performed as guerilla theatre, and read by Di Prima from the back of a flat-bed truck, the book has been re-published 4 times, updated with new letters each edition.  

Recollections of my Life as a Woman, The New York Years
Di Prima explores her childhood in Brooklyn, her experiences in 1950’s Manhattan bohemia, being a single mother, and her creativity and sexuality. The book is a journey of Di Prima’s discovery of her self, and her role as a woman in the world around her.  

Loba
Described when it was first published as “the female counterpart” to Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary text, Howl, Loba is an exploration of the feminine.  

WHO WOULD WE CAST AS HER IN A MOVIE: Indie mainstays Zoey Deschannel or Chloe Sevigny 

STYLE BEST DESCRIBED AS: Beatnik Wolf Goddess