Soho Days. Jazz and Poetry. Iris Orton. Poem "The Creation of the World". Trombone heard in the first twelve stanzas.

Iris Orton 1925 - 2019

Iris Orton, who has died aged 93, was a pioneer in the jazz and poetry movement, and a poet who predicted the dominance of the oral over the written tradition.

In 1959 she published a manifesto entitled With Music In Mind: Motive And Method, which outlined a new approach to poetry reading.

The Partisan Coffee Hous

The Partisan Coffee House was a radical venue of the New Left, at 7 Carlisle Street in the Soho district of London. It was established by historian Raphael Samuel in 1958 in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. It closed in 1962, victim of a "business model" that was hospitable to the penniless intellectuals who patronised it, but wholly unrealistic. The building is now utilised as office space.