New Departures

a magazine founded by Michael Horovitz in 1959, since when issues have appeared at irregular intervals. At its best, New Departures has fulfilled its editor's original intention of making it a forum for all the arts: poetry by leading authors from various parts of the world has been accompanied by graphic and photographic work of high quality, and musical scores by eminent experimental composers have also been published; W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, Ezra Pound, John Berryman, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Seamus Heaney, and Ted Hughes have been among its contributors, who have otherwise tended to be drawn from the ‘underground poetry’ movement. David Hockney is notable among the artists who have supplied illustrations; composers whose work has been featured include John Cage and Cornelius Cardew. The energies of Horovitz and his associates were diversified in the magazine's early stages into the ‘Live New Departures Roadshows’, the principal platform for the performance of poetry in combination with music (see Jazz Poetry) and drama throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Many poems from the magazine's earlier issues were included in Horovitz's edition of Children of Albion: Poetry of the ‘Underground’ in Britain (1969).