The poem was first performed at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. The reading was conceived by Wally Hedrick—a painter and co-founder of the Six—who approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. "At first, Ginsberg refused. But once he'd written a rough draft of Howl, he changed his 'fucking mind', as he put it." Further evidence that this was not performance art but poetry—a written piece that Ginsberg would not and has not ever described as anything but a poem not a performance piece.