Music, Poetry, and soul. Beaver Dam Rocking Chair Marathon is as much about Kentucky as it is about Ron Whitehead. Seen from afar, Kentucky is a beautiful, harsh, and unforgiving land. Yet reveals a soft underbelly that is not often viewed by others who live outside of it. From a temperamental teen to a sophisticated intellectual, Ron Whitehead reaches further into the present past to examine his life and learn how his surroundings have made him into the man he is today.
Ron Whitehead is Poet, Writer, Editor, Publisher, Organizer, Independent Scholar, Teacher. In 2002 Ron has been busier than ever traveling, writing, performing, recording. He and Iceland co-conspirator Michael Pollock put together The Viking Hillbilly Apocalypse Revue which includes some of Iceland's and Kentucky's leading musicians and poets. They did a 2-month USA spring tour. After 29 years of work Ron completed his masterwork, Beaver Dam Rocking Chair Marathon: fragments of a lost text: The Bone Man Saga (books 1 & 2 as one book). It will be released summer, 2002 by Wasteland Press. Ron recorded a new CD, I Will Not Bow Down (20 tracks, 16 with music), produced by Michael Pollock. With Nick Stevens, Mark Noderer, and Michael Pollock. Ron has created a new record label, Impossible Records, Published in Heaven for the literary renaissance. Kentucky Roots has just been released. Several more CDs are planned for release in coming months. Ron is scheduled to be in Nepal in August. He is presently touring Kentucky promoting the new Kentucky Roots CD. He'll be performing in New York City, London, Amsterdam, and Reykjavik late fall. A major USA and Europe tour is being planned for 2003.
Ron has given talks, lectures, readings, workshops, and taught 20th Century European and American Literature, Culture and Writing at numerous colleges, universities, institutions across Europe and the USA including Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), University of Iceland (Reykjavik, Iceland), University of Braga (Braga, Portugal), University of Nijmegen (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), New York University (New York, New York), Hofstra University (New York, New York), University of Louisville (Louisville, Kentucky), University of New Orleans (New Orleans, Louisiana), to name a few. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at St. Catherine College in Kentucky.
Ron is co-founder, with Kent Fielding, and, since 1993, Director of the literary renaissance, a culturally diverse non-profit organization which supports a global literary community. tlr's goal is to give a voice, an equal voice, to those who haven't been heard without excluding anyone. tlr's mission is inclusive: to create a place (on page, screen, in texts and out loud at readings, concerts, events, festivals, Insomniacathons, and in galleries, on film, on audio recordings, always open to new without excluding old) where the creative imagination is the vital source and all people stand on and share common ground, a place where known and unknown walk hand in hand.
Ron has produced over 800 events in Europe and the USA. He has edited over 500 titles and published 250 titles which include work by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter, Seamus Heaney, Jack Keoruac, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, John Updike, Rita Dove, David Amram, Thomas Merton, Edvard Munch, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Bono, Michael Pollock, MEGAS, Bragi Olafsson, William S. Burroughs, Lee Ranaldo, John Tytell, Paul Bowles, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Cathal O'Searcaigh, Theo Dorgan, Jean Genet, Casey Cyr, Hunter S. Thompson, Sarah G. Epstein, Anne Waldman, Gregory Corso, Frank Messina, James Laughlin, Jan Kerouac, Robert Lax, Ed Sanders, Herbert Huncke, Robert Hunter, Brother Patrick Hart, Denis Mahoney, Douglas Brinkley, E. Ethelbert Miller, Wendell Berry, Kent Fielding, Al Aronowitz, Jim Carroll, Jordan Green, Eithne Strong, Bob Holman, and numerous others.
Ron's work has been exhibited round the world from New York City to Louisville to New Orleans to San Francisco and from India to Czech Republic to Italy to Portugal to Ireland to The Netherlands to Iceland and beyond. The UN/UNESCO "Poetry On The Peaks" program selected The Dalai Lama/Ron Whitehead "Never Give Up" Published in Heaven message/poem Poster as its theme for 2002. 300 copies were sent to cities and mountain communities round the world.
Ron has presented over 3,000 readings of his own work. His books include Beaver Dam R
