Harry Fainlight

Poet Harry Fainlight was born into a Jewish Family in New York and raised in England. After studying English literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he worked as an advertising executive in London. In 1962, he traveled to New York City and remained there for three years. During this time, Fainlight befriended notable Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso and contributed to publications that have since been associated with the Mimeo Revolution, including Fuck You, a radical arts magazine published by Ed Sanders, and C: A Journal of Poetry, edited by Ted Berrigan. Fainlight also had a cameo in Andy Warhol’s film Harlot (1964).

After returning to London, Fainlight performed at the legendary International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in June 1965. That event, organized by the filmmaker Barbara Rubin, featured Beat poets from several different countries; more than 5,000 people attended. British filmmaker Peter Whitehead filmed the event and released it as Wholly Communion (1965). In the short documentary, Fainlight can be seen reading his poems “The Spider” and “Larksong.” Fainlight’s 12-page pamphlet, “Sussicran,” (Turret Books, 1965) was his only manuscript published during his lifetime. A portion of his work was posthumously published in Journeys: Poems (Turret Books, 1992) and Selected Poems (Turret Books, 1986).

Fainlight’s mental health struggles caused his relationships to deteriorate and impeded his writing career. Poet Ruth Fainlight, Harry’s sister and the editor of his Selected Poems, stated in an interview that “He never married, never lived with anyone, and was in and out of mental hospitals all his adult life. A book of his was going to be published, and he went to the publishers and he said, ‘Give it back to me or else I’ll blow the place up!’”

Fainlight had become almost entirely isolated by 1976. He passed away in a field outside his remote cottage in Wales after struggling with bronchial pneumonia. His papers are held in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington. Among their contents are the unpublished manuscripts City: A Sequence of Poems and London: A Book of Poems.