Author Description

The Cast Iron Poetry idea was created in conversation between a few friends in October 2020, during the depth of the worldwide Covid 19 pandemic. The first three Cast Iron Poetry volumes all came quickly. Then the snowball of an idea started to gather speed until one year on we have 12 editions published, with another dozen scheduled. The book you are holding is the thirteenth in our series. It is a baker’s dozen of poetic snapshots published during that first pandemic laden first year Cast Iron Poetry pays full homage to City Lights Books And the publishers who once shared the thoughts of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and others to millions Whose dreams were shed on subway walls. City Lights was the inspiration of Peter D Martin He first used City Lights in 1952 as the title of a magazine A year later, Martin used the name to establish the first all-paperback bookstore in the USA. The City Lights site was a tiny storefront in the triangular Artigues Building, located at 261 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. It originally shared the building with a number of other shops. It gradually gained more space whenever one of the other premises became vacant and eventually occupied the entire building. In 1953, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti was walking past the Artigues Building he encountered Martin out front hanging up a sign that announced a Pocket Book Shop He introduced himself and told him he had always wanted a bookstore Before long he and Martin agreed to a partnership and each man invested $500 in this unlikely venture. In 1955, Martin sold his share of the business to Ferlinghetti for $1,000 and moved to New York In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors made City Lights an official historic landmark citing the organization for: “Playing a seminal role in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation” Today many of the early City Lights Pocket Poets volumes have attained the sta