Background
Graduating from high school in 1951, Diane di Prima came of age just prior to the 1960's and 1970's - eras that helped usher in new ways of thinking about life, family, culture, and self to the mainstream. But in the 1950's, before those widespread political and cultural movements, another group embraced freedom and a perennial search for meaning, and sought lives beyond the repressive social codes of the time.
Ultimately coming to be known as the Beats, this loose collection of writers and artists challenged established norms with simple, powerful choices. Where they lived. How and who they loved. What they wrote, and what they did with that writing. These small personal decisions resonated on a larger scale, and 1950s New York came to be known as the New Bohemia, with an electrifying art, poetry, and music scene centered in Greenwich Village.
This eclectic community attracted young people from across the country, growing rapidly from the original and relatively small group of artists and writers. It eventually was dubbed the “Beat Movement” based on a comment attributed to Jack Kerouac, referring to their generally beat-down, disillusioned mood.
The Beat writers changed established notions about poetry and literature forever. The scene that grew around them created shock waves, influencing dozens of other social movements including anti-war, ecological, civil liberties, and feminist ones.
Di Prima is widely regarded as the most prominent woman writer of the Beats. Publishing her first book in 1958, This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards, di Prima wrote copiously and was well-known in the Greenwich Village poetry scene. She was in experimental films. She founded poetry presses, literary journals, and small theatres. And she raised a family. Her body of work now numbers more than 43 books of poetry and prose.
Di Prima, like all the Beats, wrote “the speech of the streets.” Today, their influence on literature and popular culture is undeniable. At the time, reactions to di Prima and her contemporaries ranged from being ignored to being attacked. For the most part shunned by established publishers and galleries, the Beats wrote and produced for each other, they created their own venues, and they formed literary communities on the East and West coasts.
As a teenager, di Prima had fallen in love with the poets. Her ideas about her future are reflected in her 1951 high school yearbook goal - to be a "mad genius and 15 kids in a garret full of poetry." She began writing "Nulla dies sine linea" on all of her notebooks. Translated from Latin, "No day without a line" was her way of life. She knew her life would be dedicated to poetry.
An exceptional student, di Prima won a scholarship to Swarthmore College, After less than a year, di Prima realized she couldn’t write there, and dropped out of school. In the early 1950’s, with no money, no place to live, and accompanied by a couple of friends, di Prima moved to Greenwich Village despite opposition of her family.
Di Prima became deeply involved in the literary scene. She started the Poets Theatre, the Floating Bear (with Amiri Baraka), and steadily published her poetry. Her life during these years was told eloquently in her memoirs: Recollections of My Life As A Woman.
After several years in New York di Prima headed west. Living first outside Los Angeles and then moving to Northern California, di Prima became involved with The Diggers, lived in communes in the Haight Ashbury and Northern California, participated in the Summer of Love, and continued writing and publishing.
Besides writing thousands of poems, di Prima took part in experimental films, radio shows, poetry festivals, panels, and conferences. She wrote plays and kept dozens of elaborate and delicately crafted chapbooks, traveled around the world to poetry festivals, had her work translated into several languages. She currently lives in San Francisco, where she continues writing and publishing, and teaches poetry workshops. Full bio and publication list is available on her website: http://dianediprima.com.
THIS BIRD FLIES BACKWARD is the first film exclusively about di Prima. It is a portrait of a highly unique, classically educated, raw, powerful, and visionary literary voice.