Avant Garde Poet Dick Higgins to Read His Works

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Avant garde poet Dick Higgins to read his works May 14, 1971 Dick Higgins, internationally known for his poetry, music and intermedia happenings, will read and perform from his own work at the University of California, San Diego Art Gallery at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 101th. The performance is free and open to the public. Higgins, who coined the widely used term "intermedia," began his public career during the happenings phase of the avant garde movement in the late 1950s. After composing the "first electronic opera" with Richard Maxfield and helping to found the influential "fluxus" movement in 1961, Higgins became the publisher of Something Else Press, which he established in 1964. Through the press, Higgins has chronicled many outstanding performance events of the international.avant garde as well as important books in music, dance, architecture, graphics, art and poetry. His own books include "What Are Legends," "Jefferson's Birthday/Post-Face," and "A Book About Love & War & Death, Canto 1." He is the composer of "Graphics 144: A Wipeout for Orchestra" and editor of the recently published "Fantastic Architecture." He presently teaches at the California Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles but plans to return soon to his home in Vermont to resume life as "a stalker of the wild mushroom." Higgins' appearance at UCSD is part of a series of poetry performances that comprise the public portion of a seminar-workshop offered by Jerome Rothenberg, Visiting Poet,and Regents' Professor at UCSD. The series will conclude Wednesday, May 26, with a performance of Rothenberg's "Poland/1931" in an intermedia presentation. (May 14, 1971).

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