Hero Worship: Thurston Moore on Tom Raworth
Thurston Moore pays homage to a prolific English poet who bridged the void between the punk and hippy
Tom Raworth is a writer who came out of the 60s, this scene of underground poets dealing with different ideas of using language in a way that was really correlative to experimental music like AMM or Pink Floyd. Raworth was this British poet coming out of an Essex University scene from which emerged radical activist poets: there was also this woman Anne Mendelssohn whom I reference in the song Detonation [on new album The Best Day] – she was part of the Stoke Newington Eight and a poet who used the pseudonym Grace Lake which is one of the instrumentals on the record – a contemporary of Tom Raworth’s.
But Tom was someone who really championed a lot of work that was going on around the world even if it was like language poetry, or confessional poetry, or a hybrid of those genres. He was really prolific and would do small press publishing with American underground publishers and also in the UK. He had friendships with all these heavyweights in the scene like Anselm Hollo, Allen Ginsberg, Piero Heliczer, the Velvet Underground and Gerard Malanga and I’m really interested in that subterranean history coming out of New York and what all that means. There is this connection to England which people don't really realise exists and Tom Raworth is this really interesting conduit and his work is really curious to me.
The first time I met him was in Chicago, he was giving a reading there and I was very excited as I had read his books and he was reading in conjunction with Peter Brötzmann and Peter would play for a couple of minutes and then Tom would read something and they would trade off. There were maybe twenty people in this gallery in Chicago but it was really great and we became friendly. I went to visit him a couple of times in Hove and I know he’s been struggling but he’s exemplary in being this figure who always was devotional to his vocation of being a writer regardless of any empty value of being a celebrity or famous. He just did his work and he did it all the time. To him, it was just being engaged in what you want to be as a creative individual and trying to make ends meet as best as you can.
His work has a lot of energy and it is always in question to the imbalance of power that exists within the social and political system and with a dash of biting humour to it as well. A very astute poet who was neither totally working class nor intellectual class, he had a very admirable way of being completely liberated from having to be an adherent to any political correctness. There’s a certain wildness there, he certainly came out of hippy culture but he had this edge to him that was interesting to me in terms of punk culture. The poetry community right now that has come out of the 1960s and 1970s recognise Tom Raworth as being extremely important and I think about him because of his consistent engagement with ideas. He has this very exciting voice for England, and in a way I learn a lot about England through his work. He’s not doing so well these days, he’s in his eighties and has been in and out of a hospice due to health reasons so I’m also just hoping he’s okay.