ABSTRACT
When Allen Ginsberg first visited the UK in 1958, he found that England largely conformed to its stereotypes: fog-bound and emotionally repressed. Audiences at poetry readings were “mild” and “withdrawn,” while the English poets he met seemed “afraid to be real & expose themselves” (Ginsberg & Orlovsky 1980: 136–137). However, Ginsberg expressed the hope that his own visit would finally introduce some Beat candor into the British poetry scene. Writing after a BBC broadcast in which he had wept at the realization that he was standing on the “Foggy earth of England’s Blake,” Ginsberg stated his hopes explicitly: “it will have an effect I’m sure once they broadcast that BBC record, open the floodgates in London maybe, for new feeling in poetry there—it’s all so deadened now & insincere” (143). 1
