Collection: Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso (1930–2001) was an American poet associated with the Beat Generation whose work combined surrealist imagery, black humour and lyrical intensity. Born in New York and largely self-educated after a difficult childhood, he became a central figure in the Beat circle alongside Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, publishing collections including Gasoline (1958) and The Happy Birthday of Death (1960), which contains his celebrated poem “Bomb.” Corso lived peripatetically across Europe and the United States, and his work is characterised by an anarchic energy that distinguished it from the more programmatic aspects of Beat writing. He contributed to Bald Ego no. 2 (2002), edited by Glenn O’Brien and Max Blagg.