Michael McClure has long been noted for the popularity of his dynamic poetry performances. At the age of 22 he gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl. Today McClure is more active than ever, writing and performing his poetry at festivals, colleges and clubs across the country. His audiences have ranged from an intimate dozen at a tiny Maui bookstore, to tens of thousands at San Francisco’s Human Be-in in San Francisco, and to multitudes at Airlift Africa. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, the Alfred Jarry Award, and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. McClure has written twenty plays and musicals which are performed in the U.S. and abroad. His play The Beard provoked numerous censorship battles; in Los Angeles, the cast was arrested after each performance for fourteen nights in a row. Later, The Beard received two Obies in N.Y.C. and was warmly embraced in both London and Paris. “The role model for Jim Morrison,” as characterized by the Los Angeles Times, McClure joined with Terry Riley to create I Like Your Eyes Liberty – a CD that explores spontaneous collaborations of music and voice, expressing the outrageous and mystical in both artists. McClure has made two television documentaries – The Maze and September Blackberries. His fourteen books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. He has published eight books of plays and four collections of essays, including essays on Bob Dylan and on environmental issues. His novels are The Mad Cub and The Adept. McClure’s songs include “Mercedes Benz,” popularized by Janis Joplin, and new songs which are being performed by The Twenty-first Century Doors. His journalism has been featured in The Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and the L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle.