Andy Clausen

Andy Clausen was born Andre Laloux in a Belgian bomb shelter in 1943. He was raised in Oakland, California. USA. He graduated from Bishop O'Dowd High School in 1961 and attended six colleges. An ex-marine, he is the author of 14 books of poetry, including 40th Century Man: Selected Verse 1996-1966 (Autonomedia, 1997), Without Doubt (Zeitgeist Press, 1991, introduction by Allen Ginsberg) and was coeditor of Poems for the Nation (Seven Stories Press, 2000), a collection of contemporary political poems compiled by the late poet Allen Ginsberg.

In 1968, he signalled the intensity of his energetic spoken word recital for which he would become known and would affect the generation of latter-day beats as well as many writers of Generation X when he performed naked save for an American flag tie at the Conference Of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers in Berkeley. The following month, when Allen Ginsberg caught a glimpse of Clausen at the Rolling Renaissance readings in San Francisco, he thought he was seeing the young Neal Cassady. Allen Ginsberg not only called him the "Future of American Poetry" but in the introduction to Without Doubt, said he would take a chance on a "President Clausen."

Clausen has taught at Naropa University and given readings and lectures at many universities, prisons, poetry conferences, and cafes at home and around the world. He has worked for poetry in the schools agencies in California, New Jersey, Colorado and New York. He is presently working on memoirs of his friendship and adventures with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and many others of the Beat Generation.

Books

Extreme Unction (Litmus Press, 1972)
Shoe-Be-do-Be-EE-op (Madness Incorporated, 1975)
Austin Texas Austin Texas (Place of Herons, 1980)
Iron Curtain of Love (Long Shot, 1984)
Without Doubt (Zeitgeist, 1990)
The Streets of Kashi (Roadkill, 1993)
40th Century Man: Selected Verse: 1996-1966 (Autonomedia, 1997)
Festival of Squares (Shivastan, 2003)
Songs of Bo Baba (Shivastan, 2005)
The Merciless Chill (Pressure Press, 2007)
Ginsberg, Corso and Me (Pressure Press, 2009)
The Medicine isn’t Working (Pressure Press, 2012)
From the Beat (Pressure Press, 2012)
Home of the Blues: More Selected Poems (MAP Publications, 2013)