Poet: Ira Cohen
Publisher: Cold Turkey Press, Rotterdam
Year: 1976
Size: 300 x 215 x 3 mm
Pages: 42, saddle-stitched
Language: English
Photography: Ira Cohen
Cover art: Petra Vogt
Condition: Very good; minor stains and damage
The book comes with a double-headed eagle by cut-out artist Evert Roos sr.
Postage & packing not included
American photographer, poet and publisher Ira Cohen was born to deaf parents in the Bronx in 1935. After having dropped out of Cornell University, having married and having had two children with his wife Arlene Bond, Cohen sailed to Tangier in 1961, where he stayed for four years. In those years Cohen published his seminal Gnaoua journal with contributions by Jack Smith, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Harold Norse a.o. Cohen returned to the US in the mid-1960s, where he took inspiration from Bill Devore’s photographic work and started his famous series of mylars, which included portraits of Jimi Hendrix and William Burroughs. In 1968 Cohen directed his acclaimed films Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Paradise Now, documenting the Living Theatre’s US tour. With former Living Theatre member Petra Vogt Cohen travelled to Kathmandu in the early 1970s. There he published the delicate Starstreams poetry series on local rice paper together with Angus MacLise and the Bardo Matrix crew. Cohen stayed in Amsterdam for several periods during the mid and late 1970s, where his friends Simon Vinkenoog and Eddie Woods lived and fellow-expat William Levy introduced him to Gerard Bellaart from Rotterdam. Through his Cold Turkey Press Bellaart published Cohen’s Kathmandu Portfolio and From the Divan of Petra Vogt in 1976. In 1981 Cohen returned to New York, where he married and had a daughter with Caroline Gosselin. They divorced in 1989. Cohen spent the rest of life in New York and died of kidney failure in 2011.
From the Divan of Petra Vogt was published in 1976 in an edition of 250 by Cold Turkey Press, Rotterdam. The handsome and sought-after edition contains poems and photographs from Kathmandu by Ira Cohen and artwork by Petra Vogt. During a stay in Rotterdam in the summer of 1976 Cohen put together his edition together with publisher Gerard Bellaart. This particular copy is the first collated one, the pages not yet cut to size and some of them hand numbered. In Bellaart’s handwriting it says 17.VI.76 first collated above the colophon. Inside is one of the double-headed eagles (not the one that was printed in the book) that cut-out artist Evert Roos from Amsterdam made that summer for the title page of the edition. This one-of-a-kind copy marks the moment when From the Divan of Petra Vogt came together and the order of the pages was decided upon: a rare document that offers a glimpse of the Divan’s genesis at Schietbaanlaan, Rotterdam, now almost half a century ago.