Janine Pommy Vega

Janine Pommy Vega (February 5, 1942 – December 23, 2010) was an American poet associated with the Beats.

Early life

Janine Pommy was born in Jersey City, New Jersey.<ref name=Ind>Hunt, Ken (February 22, 2011). "Obituary: Janine Pommy Vega: Beat poet and close associate of Corso, Ginsberg and Orlovsky". The Independent.</ref> Her father worked as a milkman in the mornings and a carpenter in the afternoons.<ref name=NewYorkTimes>Grimes, William (January 2, 2011). "Janine Pommy Vega, Restless Poet, Dies at 68". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 11, 2013.</ref> At the age of sixteen, inspired by Jack KerouacTemplate:'s On the Road, she went with a friend to the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, where they met Gregory Corso; in 1960, after graduating as valedictorian of her high school class, she moved in with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/>

Career

She worked as a waitress and wrote Beat-inspired experimental poetry. In December 1962, she married the Peruvian painter Template:Ill in Israel and moved with him to Paris, where she collected money for street musicians and modeled at the École des Beaux-Arts.<ref name=Ind/><ref name=NewYorkTimes/> After Vega's sudden death in Ibiza in 1965, she returned to the United States and moved to California. Her first book, Poems to Fernando, was published by City Lights in 1968 in their City Lights Pocket Poets Series, the third volume by a woman.<ref name=Ind/>

In the 1970s and 1980s Vega traveled widely, trekking in the Himalayas and living in Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia, including two years as a hermit on the Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian-Peruvian border, where she completed Journal of a Hermit (1974) and Morning Passage (1976).<ref name=Ind/><ref name=NewYorkTimes/> Tracking the Serpent: Journeys to Four Continents (1997) chronicles her 1980s travels to centers of ancient matriarchy.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/>

In addition to her own books of poetry, the last of which was The Green Piano (2005),<ref name=NewYorkTimes/> Vega was widely anthologized, including in City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology and Women of the Beat Generation.<ref name=TWC>"Janine Pommy Vega". Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Archived from the original on February 10, 2007.</ref> She also toured with a band called Tiamalu, performing in English and Spanish.<ref name=TWC/>

Teaching

Vega taught in schools in English and Spanish through arts in education programs including Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Poets in the Schools, Arts/Genesis, and New York City Ballet,<ref name=TWC/> and beginning in the mid-1970s in prisons through Incisions/Arts, becoming its director in 1987, and later through the Bard Prison Initiative run by Bard College.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/> She served on the PEN Prison Writing Committee.<ref name=TWC/>

Later life and death

From 1999, Vega lived with poet Andy Clausen. On December 23, 2010, she died at home in Willow, New York, of a heart attack.<ref name=NewYorkTimes/><ref name=Ind/>

Awards

She won two Golda Awards, the second for The Green Piano, and was awarded many grants, including an annual grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for her work in prisons through Incisions/Arts.<ref>Grants. Janine Pommy Vega. Retrieved May 23, 2022.</ref>

Works

• Poems to Fernando (1968)
• Journal of a Hermit (1974); repr. with Under The Sky
• Morning Passage (1976)
• Here at the Door (1978)
• The Bard Owl (1980)
• Skywriting (1988)
• Apex of The Earth's Way (1984)
• Drunk on a Glacier, Talking to Flies (1988)
• Island of the Sun (1991)
• Threading the Maze (1992)
• Red Bracelets (1993)
• Tracking the Serpent: Journeys to Four Continents (1997)
• The Road to Your House Is A Mountain Road (1995)
• The Walker (2003)
• Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems (2000)
• The Green Piano (2005)<ref>Books. Janine Pommy Vega. Retrieved May 23, 2022.</ref>
• She also published in literary journals such as Earth's Daughters.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

External links

• Website
• Janine Pommy-Vega (1942-2010): cyber tombeau by poet Pierre Joris, including the opening poem of Poems to Fernando and a homage-poem by Valery Oişteanu, "The Drum Circle for Janine Pommy Vega".