Allen Ginsberg visited Manchester twice. He barely figures in the city’s history, and Manchester barely figures in his. Yet two brief visits – a summer afternoon in 1973, a Library Theatre reading in 1979 – hold richer stories than the bare facts suggest.
 
Ginsberg & Manchester brings together several figures whose lives were touched by Ginsberg in different ways: Alan Wise, a charismatic music impresario from Salford whose letters to Ginsberg span fourteen years; Steven Taylor, a guitarist born in Gorton who became Ginsberg’s closest musical companion for two decades; Jonathan Williams, the American avant-garde publisher who first brought Ginsberg into the city centre; and Jampa Thaye, a Manchester grammar school boy who discovered Buddhism through Kerouac, became an influential Buddhist teacher, and was Ginsberg’s host when he came to the Library Theatre.
 
This is a story about how a great American poet left a faint but enduring mark on an English city that never quite noticed he was there.
 
The book also features rare and unpublished photos of Ginsberg and his associates.
 
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