Diane di Prima
| Diane di Prima | |
|---|---|
Diane di Prima, photo by Gloria Graham during the video taping of Add-Verse, 2004
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| Born |
August 6, 1934 Brooklyn, New York |
| Occupation | Poet, Author, Artist |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Hunter College High School |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College |
| Literary movement | Beat movement |
| Notable awards |
3
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| Years active | 1958-present |
| Children |
5
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| Relatives | Domenico Mallozzi (maternal grandfather) |
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Diane di Prima (born August 6, 1934) is an American poet and artist. She is also a prose writer, memoirist, playwright, social justice activist and teacher. Di Prima has authored nearly four dozen books, with her work translated into more than 20 languages.
Di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan. Her official online biography notes that she is "a second generation American of Italian descent" and that "Her maternal grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, was an active anarchist, and associate of Carlo Tresca and Emma Goldman." Di Prima began writing as a child and by the age of 19 was corresponding with Ezra Pound and Kenneth Patchen. Her first book of poetry, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, was published in 1958 by Hettie and LeRoi Jones' Totem Press.
Di Prima spent the late 1950s and early 1960s in Manhattan, where she participated in the emerging Beat movement. She spent some time in California at Stinson Beach and Topanga Canyon, returned to New York City and eventually moved to San Francisco permanently. Di Prima was a bridge figure between the Beat movement and the later hippies, as well as between East Coast and West Coast artists.
She edited The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and was co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre and founder of the Poets Press. On several occasions she faced charges of obscenity by the United States government due to her work with the New York Poets Theatre and the newspaper The Floating Bear. In 1961 she was actually arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for publishing two poems in The Floating Bear. According to di Prima, police persistently harassed her due to the nature of her poetry. In 1966, she spent some time at Millbrook with Timothy Leary's psychedelic community and printed the first two editions of "Psychodelic Prayers" by Leary in Spring 1966.
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