Lewis MacAdams

Lewis MacAdams (born October 12, 1944)^[1] is an American poet, journalist, political activist, and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles, California.

Life and work

MacAdams was born in San Angelo, Texas^[2] and graduated from Princeton University in 1966. He is the author of a dozen books and tapes of poetry, and his poems have appeared in many anthologies. In 2001, he published his Birth of The Cool, a cultural history of the idea of cool. As a journalist, MacAdams has been a contributing editor of the L.A. Weekly and has written regularly on culture and ecology for Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, L.A. Times, and Los Angeles Magazine.^[3]

As a political activist, MacAdams is a cofounder of Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR) established in 1985 (and has served as Chair on their Board of Directors). FoLAR has been characterized by MacAdams as a "40 year art work" to bring the Los Angeles River back to life. In the years since, he has become the River’s most important and influential advocate. Among FoLAR’s many projects are an annual river clean-up, the "Gran Limpieza," which brings 2500 people down to the river to clean up every Spring; and an on-going series of conferences and planning workshops dealing with every aspect of the river. Two of its current major goals are to create a Los Angeles River Conservancy to oversee restoration of the river, and a River Watch program to improve the River’s water quality and target polluters^[4]

In 1991, MacAdams received the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society’s annual Conservation Award.^[5]The River: Books One, Two & Three, takes the Los Angeles River as its metaphor, weaving the story and song of the poet, activist and journalist as these three roles form the confluence which is the man.^[6]

Selected publications

Books

City Money: Poems. Burning Water (1966)
City Room
The Poetry Room. New York: Harper & Row; First Edition (January 1, 1970)
A Bolinas Report
Tilth
Dance, pamphlet. Canton: The Institute of Further Studies; first edition (January 1, 1972)
News From Niman Farm, Tombouctou Books, 1976; first edition (November 1976)
Live At The Church. Kulchur Foundation (1977)
Blind Date, pamphlet. Am Here Books/Immediate Editions; first edition (January 1, 1981)
The Angel (with Rita Degli Esposti & Gianantonio Pozzi)
Africa and The Marriage of Walt Whitman and Marilyn Monroe. Little Caesar Press (1982)
The River, Books One & Two. Palo Alto, CA: Blue Press, 1998
Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde. New York: The Free Press, 2001
The Family Trees, (illustrated by Kim Abeles). Palo Alto, CA: Blue Press, 2001
A Poem for the Dawn of the Terror Years. Palo Alto, CA: Blue Press, 2003
The River: Books One, Two, and Three. Palo Alto, CA: Blue Press, revised second edition, 2007
Lyrics. Palo Alto, CA: Blue Press, 2009
Dear Oxygen. New Orleans, LA: University of New Orleans Press, 2011

Audiotapes

To The Russian Women
And Now The News
Dear Oxygen (2007)

Articles

“Poetry and Politics.” Talking poetics from Naropa Institute : annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics V. 2. Ed. Anne Waldman and Marilyn Webb, Boulder, Colo. : Shambhala, 1979
Remembering Jim Carroll. Los Angeles Times. 16 September 2009.^[7]
Lewis MacAdams and Linda Wagner-Martin (Fall 1968). "Robert Creeley, The Art of Poetry No. 10". The Paris Review.

Films

directed (with Richard Lerner), What Happened to Kerouac? (1986) Documentary.

Sources

External links

Interview of Lewis MacAdams, part of Environmental Activism in Los Angeles interview series, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Q: What do I love about Philip Whalen's poems? written for the L.A. Weekly on the occasion of the publication of Philip Whalen’s Overtime, March, 1999
Interview with Lewis MacAdams subtitled: Birth of the Cool. Beat, Bebop and the American Avant-Garde. MacAdams is interviewed by Paul DeRienzo
Grand Central Station a chapbook of poems by MacAdams featured at Big Bridge#9
Friends of the Los Angeles River main website
Dale Smith reviews Lewis MacAdams
Orhan Pamuk's L.A. stroll conjures up familiar sights MacAdams article, which first appeared November 2009 in the L.A. Times, discusses the Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, and his bond with Los Angeles' old-fashioned urban scape.
KCET Departures interview with Lewis Macadams artist and advocate of the L.A. River

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 23609123 ISNI: 0000 0001 1045 8400 SUDOC: 070993203 BNF: cb16700477w (data)

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