page_title: Neil Oram
section_title: Soho, Jazz, Art & Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Neil Oram / Soho, Jazz, Art & Poetry
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting by Neil Oram
context_page_description: Neil Oram is a British musician, poet, artist and playwright, best known as the author of The Warp, a 10 play cycle, directed by Ken Campbell.
context_section_description: In 1956 Oram traveled to Africa where he met musician Mike Gibbs in Salisbury, (now Harare). He played double bass in the Mike Gibbs Quintet with Gibbs on piano, vibes and trombone. A post-concert epiphany where a voice repeatedly told him "Je suis un poet!" led him to take up writing. Oram returned to Britain in 1958 where he ran a jazz café called The House of Sam Widges at 8 D'Arblay Street in Soho, London. The café was known for its jukebox which only had modern jazz records. It attracted many of the top London musicians. Ronnie Scott, Tubby Hayes, Graham Bond, Dave Tomlin and Bobby Wellins were frequent customers, occasionally enjoying a bowl of spaghetti bolognese crafted by Oram. Downstairs was a club/performance space called 'The Pad'.
  Oram was now writing poetry, giving readings and painting large abstract jazz inspired paintings. In 1960 he opened The Mingus art gallery in Marshall Street, Soho where abstract paintings by O. G. Bradbury, George Popperwell, Jaime Manzano, Tony Shiels and William Morris the American beat poet/action painter could be seen. Morris's huge, jazz paintings were executed in The Pad to the vibrant sounds of the Graham Bond Quartet, then carried round the corner and hung up wet in The Mingus.
  Oram’s published poems can be found in ‘Children of Albion’ (Penguin 1968), ‘Words-re-arranged’, (privately printed 1970), ‘Past The Antique Pain’ (Zum Zum 1974), ‘Beauty’s Shit’ (Zum Zum 1976), ‘The Golden Forgotten’ (Great Works 1977), ‘Yes To The Fresh’  (Zum Zum 1995).
  Oram contributed to the Poetry Review, edited by Eric Mottram, a mainstay of the modernist-inspired British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s.
  Oram's poems & other writings can be found in underground magazines from the late 1950s onwards, like Night Scene published by Lee Harwood, and International Times (IT) A select collection of poems drawn from 56 years of poetry, The Rain Stands Tall, was published in 2015 by Barncott Press.
  Oram has over a long period  painted abstracts, mostly  not shown in public. The paintings include a series of twenty geometric images, the Diamond Series, painted over two decades.
caption: Spring Again (2006)- Neil Oram
exif: {"Image Copyright": "Copyright 2005"}