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Neeli CherkovskiIn the 1970s, he was a political consultant in the Riverside area, moving to San Francisco in 1974 to work for then-State Senator George Moscone. In San Francisco, he came out as gay, reclaimed his family's historical name, and became a major figure in the North Beach literary community. In the 1990s, he became a writer-in-residence at the New College of California, teaching literature and philosophy there until it closed in 2008. The author of numerous collections of poetry, Cherkovski also wrote the first biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1979) and Charles Bukowski (1991), as well as Whitman's Wild Children (1988), a collection of his memoirs of 12 Beat Generation poets. He co-edited books, including Anthology of L.A. Poets (1972) and The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (2019). His collection Leaning Against Time won the 15th Annual PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2005. In 2017, he was awarded the Jack Mueller Poetry Prize by Lithic Press, which published his 400-page, career-spanning Selected Poems 19592022 in 2024. Cherkovski is also the subject of the documentary film, It's Nice to Be with You Always (2020). He lived in San Francisco with Jesse Cabrera, his partner of 40 years.
"""He was everything you could hope for in a classic West Coast poet, including seemingly unconcerned with anything in life more than with the line, the rhythm, the poem.""—Joshua Bodwell, Zyzzyva ""[H]is reputation eventually grew commensurate with his powers and gifts as a poet. He was the real deal, a poet obsessed with his chosen art, and they don't make poets like him anymore.""—Garrett Caples, editor, City Lights ""[S]omeone who knew virtually all of the important West Coast Beats and learned from them firsthand . . .""—allenginsberg.org ""Age permeates these poems. It is the impetus to a compressed music that searches the heart of thought, turning feelings and impressions upside down, in order to move, or should I say, dance on.""—Paul Vangelisti, editor, LA Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing 1932-1998"
