Diane Di Prima
1934-2020
is one of the few female Beat writers to attain prominence and is certainly a writer who is worth investigating.
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She was born in New York City on August 6, 1934 a second generation American of Italian descent. She began writing at the age of seven, and made the decision to live her life as a poet at the age of fourteen.She lived in Manhattan for many years, and is often considered the most important woman writer of the Beat movement. Among her activites: she co-founded the New York Poets Theatre, and founded the Poets Press, which published the work of many new writers of the period. Together with Amiri Baraka she edited The Floating Bear, a literary newsletter. In 1965 she moved to upstate New York where she participated in Timothy Leary’s psychedelic community at Millbrook. It was at this location where she lived the “bohemian lifestyle” that typified the Beat movement.
She published her first book of poetry, a collection called This Kind of Bird Flies Backward was published in 1958. In the early 1960’s, she collaborated with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and started a monthly periodical that featured the work of themselves and many other notable Beats, including Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
She also was the founder of two publishing houses which focused on the writing of innovative and avant-garde poets: The Poets Press and Eidolon Editions. She also began a career as a lecturer at the Naropa Institute in Colorado in 1974.
Di Prima’s career may reflect a struggle with the political and social upheavals that occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s however, her writing often focused on her personal life and relationships. Much of her later writing reflected an interest in alchemy, female archetypes and of course, Eastern philosophies.
Some of her works include: Poems for Freddie (1966), Earthsong Poems 1957 – 1959 (1968) The Book of Hours (1970), Loba, Parts 1 – 8 (1978), and Pieces of a Song (1990).
She also authored a collection of short fictional stories, Dinners and Nightmares (1961) and an autobiographical book, Memoirs of a Beatnik released in 1969.
Later she lived and worked in northern California, where she took part in the political activities of the Diggers, lived in a late-sixties’ commune, studied Zen Buddhism, Sanskrit and alchemy, and raised her five children. From 1980 to 1986 she taught hermetic and esoteric traditions in poetry in a short-lived but significant program at New College of California. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages.She now lives and works in San Francisco, where she is one of the co-founders and teachers of the San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing Arts. Her current works in progress include ‘Not Quite Buffalo Stew’, a satire of California life, an autobiographical memoir called ‘Recollections of My Life as a Woman’, and a book on Shelley as magician/poet.
In June 2002, the Diane DiPrima website was launched, representing the poet’s entree into the online world.
