On March 6th, 2011, Louise Landes Levi recorded an extended reading by Ira Cohen in his apartment on West 106th Street, New York—the final such recording. The entire read is currently being produced into a cassette by Bart de Paepe of Sloow Tapes. We present two audio poems from that recording.
Download the .mp3 file
Download the .mp3 file
Ira Cohen (1935-2011) was an innovative and original poet, photographer, filmmaker, publisher, and editor. A self-described "Electronic Multimedia Shaman", he was an active humanist from the 1960s to the present. Mr. Cohen was educated at Horace Mann, Cornell and Columbia. He spent the early 1960s in Tangier, Morocco, where he lived and worked with William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Paul Bowles.
In the late 1960s, along with Bill Devore he developed and perfected a photography process in his "Mylar Chamber", producing distorted, iconic photographic portraits of Jimi Hendrix, Jack Smith, Robert LaVigne, Angus MacLise, Pharaoh Sanders, and William S. Burroughs, among others. Ira was a participating artist in the Whitney Biennial 2006, Day for Night, which included his photographs of Jack Smith.
His films include The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, Paradise Now in Amerika, and Kings With Straw Mats. His primary work since the early 1990s was as a poet and editor; he edited numerous books (Jack Smith's Historical Treasures, Gustav Meyrink's Petroleum Petroleum, and poetry anthologies Shamanic Warriors and Celestial Graffiti) and periodicals (Ins & Outs, Third Rail, Nexus, and 15 Minutes). Photo by Jonathan Penton.
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