About Clive Matson

He became a protégé of the Beat Generation in New York in the 1960s. His mentor was Herbert Huncke and John Wieners was the poet he most admired. His first book of poems, Mainline to the Heart, was published in 1966 by Diane DiPrima's Poets Press.

In 1968 he returned to the West Coast and worked variously as warehouse clerk, taxi driver for Berkeley's Taxi Unlimited, furniture mover, and letterpress printer. As a writer he participated in the Berkeley Poets Cooperative, Josephine Miles' workshop, and Alan Soldofsky's peer group.

In the late 1970s he became interested in teaching. He taught at the Bay Area Socialist School, Pacific Oaks College, and since becoming a regular instructor for the University of California Extension in Berkeley, he has made his living teaching creative writing. He earned an MFA in poetry at Columbia University in 1989.

Over the years Matson has refined his style, which retains the direct expression and democratic impulse of his first poems. He lists his influences as Vipassana meditation, psychotherapy, 12-step programs, honest attention to daily experience, and painful political awareness. He reports that today he writes mostly from the itch in his body.

Clive enjoys basketball, table tennis, growing organic food, digging crystals from the ground, and being a good father to his son Ezra. He lives in Oakland.