December 2nd would have been the 111th birthday of Helen Adam, the beloved Scottish eccentric who found a home in San Francisco's thriving midcentury poetry scene. While we don't have an extensive archive of her work, we're nevertheless glad to have a set of essential recordings that give listeners a clear sense of what made Adam so special.
Chief among these is her magnum opus, San Francisco's Burning, a lyric drama co-written with Adam's sister Pat, which was produced by Charles Ruas for the Audio Experimental Theatre and first broadcast on New York City's WBAI FM on July 17th, 1977. In addition to the two Adam sisters, the radio play's cast also included Marilyn Hacker, Robert Hershon, and Barbara Wise in major roles. To give listeners some context for this iconic piece, we're very glad to be able to share Kristin Prevallet's "Notes on San Francisco's Burning" from A Helen Adam Reader (2007), which features some charming anecdotes about the drama's production, including this recollection from musical director Rob Wynne regarding the "structured chaos" of the recording process: "It took a few months to pull it all together, often ending up after a session at Helen & Pat's apartment, surrounded by her collection of agates and stones, in which she saw images and stories. She always served celery filled with peanut butter, a bizarre but oddly delicious combination."
Aside from San Francisco's Burning, Adam is perhaps best known for her rollicking performance of "Cheerless Junkie's Song" from Ron Mann's 1981 film, Poetry in Motion, which is presented here, along with PoemTalk #93, in which host Al Filreis leads a discussion of the poem with panelists Corina Copp, Laura Sims, and Richard Deming. Finally, we have Adam's late-70s appearance on Susan Howe's Pacifica FM radio show, where she discusses her life and work with Howe and Ruas. This recording has been broken into MP3s for individual poems (including "Ballad of the Hawthorn Bower," "In and Out of the Horn-Beam Maze," "At the Window," "The Fair Young Wife," and "A Walk in the Wind") as well as different thematic segments of the interview (such as "On her childhood in Scotland;" "On Allen Ginsberg, Jack Spicer, Open Space, and the atmosphere of San Francisco;" and "On gothic romances, magic, and the relationship between love and death"). Listeners will also enjoy browsing "A Helen Adam Sampler," Prevallet's brief selection of poems that forms the centerpiece of Adam's EPC author page. You can find links to all of these resources on PennSound's Helen Adam author page.
