Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg Synopsis

Allen Ginsberg's epic poem 'Howl', written in 1955, is one of the defining works of the Beat Generation despite having been labelled obscene when it was first published. A harsh denunciation of American capitalism and conformity, the poem drew scenes, characters and situations from Ginsberg's life, a life re-examined here by his former editor and researcher, Steve Finbow.
Allen Ginsberg charts the influences of the poet and activist's childhood - his poet father and schizophrenic mother - and how he met with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs in New York in the late 1940s. We follow him to Mexico and India, and back to America, where he played a significant role in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and New York's 1970s punk scene, exploring his obsessive need to travel and his experiments in writing, altered states of consciousness and sexuality. Later Ginsberg was slowly absorbed into academia while remaining an iconoclast and champion of the disenfranchised. With appearances by Peter Orlovsky, Kerouac, Burroughs and other leading figures of twentieth-century literature, art, filmmaking and politics, Allen Ginsberg brims with insight into the poetry and politics of this vital cultural figure.