Grammy-winning, Pulitzer Prize nominee Michael C Ford is an archetypal Venice, CA, poet, whose voice has been heard for decades, not only in the written word but also performed in concert with jazz and rock musicians. That his work remains fresh was evidenced by a recent SRO performance at Beyond Baroque. He noted, with a little surprise, that people are still fascinated by the Venice poets. And fascinating his stories are: rather than following the usual path advised by his high school educators, he instead followed his instincts. These led him to rich experiences of working and making friends with directors, actors, poets and musicians for which he is now famous. Ford- as he refers to himself- punctuates his stories with his distinctive laugh, which hints at the many layers contained in his work.
His first reading of his poetry occurred at a fund raiser in 1969 for Norman Mailer‘s run for Mayor of New York. He performed with Jim Morrison lead singer The Doors, poets Jack Hirschman, Michael McClure and several Andy Warhol “Factory workers.”[2]
Ford has since made a number of collaborative recordings with members of The Doors – drummer John Densmore, and pianist and keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
He was influenced by Poet Kenneth Patchen in terms of integrating the spoken words with jazz. His debut spoken word record Language Commando earned a Grammy nomination in 1986.[1]
Writer Peter Cherces, very well known on the East Coast, who has been singing jazz and writing lyrics since the 1980s, recently requested Michael C Ford to perform with him in “Jazz and Words” on Friday, September 18th, 8:00 PM at Beyond Baroque at 681 N. Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291.
Michael C Ford is currently leading the EngAGE in Poetry group at NoHo Senior Arts Colony. The work of one of its members was recently featured in a video and article in the Los Angeles Times.
He is preparing members of the group to participate in the October 21st Lit Crawl LA in North Hollywood Arts District. The theme is, “What was life like when you were a kid?” and senior writers from the NoHo Senior Arts and Burbank Senior Artist Colonies will reflect on times before computers and cell-phones in a reading that brings to light their combined hundreds of years of life experience at one great event.
Poets and Writers Inc., underwrite this unique EngAGE program. Founded in 1970, P&W is the nation’s largest nonprofit literary organization serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, and has been serving California through its Readings & Workshops program for the past twenty-five years. P&W has generously supported EngAGE’ s poetry programs for the past 7 years. You can find out more about Poets & Writers on their website, and on Facebook and Twitter.
Also, please remember that you can hear Tim Carpenter’s interview with Michael C Ford this Sunday at 5:00 PM on Experience Talks.
Michael kindly sent along a poem, especially for our blog:
As the flowers / that crop / in your imagination / are harvested as
Images / remembering always / that “image” is easily born from
the word imagination
~ Thanks to EngAGE C.O.O. Dr. Maureen Kellen-Taylor for this post!
