Diane di Prima, celebrated Beat poet, will read from her poem LOBA, a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the feminine at 3pm April 30, 2005 as part of DIVAfest, produced by EXIT Theatre. LOBA, "she-wolf" in Spanish, explores the wilderness at the heart of experience.
Diane has published forty-two books of poetry and prose and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934, a second generation American of Italian descent. Her maternal grandmother, Domenico Mallozzi, was an active anarchist, and associate of Carlo Tresca and Emma Goldman. She began writing at the age of seven, and committed herself to a life as a poet at the age of fourteen.
She lived and wrote in Manhattan for many years, where she became known as an important writer of the Beat movement. During that time 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 (LeRoi Jones) she edited the literary newsletter, The Floating Bear (1961-1969). In 1966 she moved to upstate New York where she participated in Timothy Leary's psychedelic community at Millbrook.
For the past thirty-four years she has lived and worked in northern California, where she took part in the political activities of the Diggers, and wrote Revolutionary Letters. She also studied Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sanskrit and alchemy, and raised her five children. In the 1970's she began her epic poem Loba, of which Parts 1-8 were published in 1978. From 1980 to 1987, she taught Hermetic and esoteric traditions in poetry, in a short-lived but significant Masters-in-Poetics program at New College of California, which she established together with poets Robert Duncan and David Meltzer. This program put the emphasis on the hermetic aspects of English and American poetry. She has also taught at California College of Arts and Crafts, and the San Francisco Art Institute. She was one of the co-founders of San Francisco Institute of Magickal and Healing Arts (SIMHA), where she taught Western spiritual traditions from 1983 to 1992.
She is the author of 40 books of poetry and prose, including Pieces of a Song (City Lights, 1990). Her work has been translated into at least twenty languages. She has received grants for her poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993, she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the National Poetry Association. In May / June 1994 she was Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 1999, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from St. Lawrence University. In Spring, 2000, she was Master Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College, Chicago. In 2002, she was one of three finaliists for the position of Poet Laureate of California.
A Loba: Books I & II (twice as much material as the 1978 Wingbow Press edition) was published in the Penguin Poets Series in August 1998. Her autobiographical memoir, Recollections of My Life As a Woman, was published by Viking in April 2001. Recent poetry chapbooks include Towers Down (with Clive Matson), published by Eidolon Editions in 2002; and The Ones I Used to Laugh With, Habenicht Press, San Francisco, 2003.
- "The Loba poems are an epic act of language, a great
geography of the female imagination."
--Adrienne Rich
- "I'm glad to have Loba. They are old incantations made new in our living flesh."
--Muriel Rukeyser
- "In the twentieth century, Woman has liberated herself from the pedestal upon which she has been 'set up,' mostly by men. Loba entrhones her again, only this time it is done by herself."
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- "There's primal magic at work here. Diane di Prima pulls readers and hearers of Loba into the center of Yin, and imbues us with life power."
--Maxine Hong Kingston
- "Loba is a mysterious compelling poem or series of poems whose vision of the female godhead is precise, ever changing, even deepening. It incorporates ecstasy and rot, all the forms of the female experience from birth through death, transmuting them into poetry that seizes the imagination. Diane di Prima has borrowed from many mythologies to create her own numinous myth of the wolf goddess."
--Marge Piercy
- "Loba is an actual touchable visionary poem of sentience and myriad-minded mammal nature. Loba is about points and swirls of energy, about alchemy, and about the biology of imagination. It all happens in the real, ever-arising universe."
--Michael McClure
- "My response to Loba is one of awe and gratitude. Blood-drenched and liberating, tis is a poem for the ages."
--Robert Hunter
- "This epic poem is a radical classic -- truly original, imbued with the raw, the wild ... the feminine ... a re-cultivation of inspiration through stregth within."
--Joan Halifax
- "These oracular poems sing out in testament & celebration of fierce female psyche & wisdom. The Loba-cycle is a potent mythic adventure everone should experience."
--Anne Waldman
- "The poem induces a lovely experience of this world as exactly another world; it would retrieve the world for women. I've very pleased to welcome it in its entirety so far."
--Alice Notley
- "I love this book. It's one to travel with. Wander through, growl, fall down and get up again. People and poets can only be grateful that Diane di Prima's illuminated and gnarly words are beating through American poetry."
--Eileen Myles
- "Aphrodisiac and meditation, a sumptuous celebration of body and mind, Loba exalts the mutable world with fragrance and fire. It is a prilliantly imagined book."
--Rikki Ducornet
DIVAfest 2005 April 20 - 30, 2005 San Francisco For More Info Contact: Christina Augello 415-931-1094 mail@sffringe.org 
Diane di Prima PHOTO: David Short
downtown San Francisco