LA poet SA Griffin gets his due with the cover story of LA Alternative this week. Well, it would be nice if it were the NY Times Magazine instead, but at least it’s some attention. SA has been a generous and kind fixture on the LA literary scene for years. He met Bukowski, he let Beck play his little songs at poetry readings, and has even has been the minister at a number of weddings. He was on Pinky’s Paperhaus once, too, but sadly the recording was lost to a technical glitch.
SA has the heart of a true poet — beat or punk style, that is. Basically, he does his thing. He doesn’t care if you’re cool, and he doesn’t care if you think he’s cool or not.
SA started doing southwest poetry tours in the ’80s, ending with the grandest of them all, a 1991 bus tour that flopped horribly. Part of the flop was that they were freaks in a breaking-down bus that was painted freakishly — we all got together with spraypaint (I had a lot of spraypaint then, and I wasn’t the only one) and made sure the bus would stand out. Out in the desert, they didn’t like that so much. I don’t think it helped that the bus was full of drunken poets. Drunk drunk drunks.
I would quote one of SA’s poems here but his website is down — too busy. Hooray! Good for SA Griffin!
Just a note: SA told me he never met the Buk. It’s in the story…
When I asked him if he had, he replied, “I don’t really drink.”
🙂