Poet on TRial

In 1966, an obscure Beat poet was catapulted into the national spotlight when her self-published book of poems, The Love Book, was seized by police and subjected to San Francisco’s longest obscenity trial in history. POET ON TRIAL is the timely story of forgotten poet Lenore Kandel and her fight for artistic freedom.

The story of Lenore Kandel begins where so many stories of 1960s counterculture do: San Francisco, California. The poet was regarded as a force among the scene: outspoken, sexually liberated, a gifted writer. Like many of her contemporaries, she was a denizen of the small enclave of North Beach, self-publishing in relative obscurity–at least to the world outside of San Francisco. Her obscurity wouldn’t last for long. Meanwhile, newly elected governor of California Ronald Reagan was growing weary of the increasingly outspoken American counterculture movement. He considered the Berkeley students across the Bay “radicals and filthy speech advocates”, and beginning in 1966, set out to bring “good old-fashioned American values” back to California.

That year, Lenore self-published a modest book of erotic psychedelic poems called The Love Book. The influential, Beat-minded North Beach bookstore City Lights and The Psychedelic Shop (America’s first head shop) stocked it immediately, though it had modest sales–that is, until the police entered the picture, vaulting it into the spotlight. On the morning November 15, 1966, following the commands of the governor, police raided The Psychedelic Shop, then moved on to City Lights. A shop owner and two workers were arrested, books were seized. The culprit? Lenore’s poem ‘To Fuck With Love’: page 4, The Love Book. The case would go on to become San Francisco’s longest running obscenity trial, featuring a unique three-judge panel, a dizzying amount of trials, jurors, witnesses, and protests, culminating with a verdict that the book, with its colorful descriptions of body parts and fornication, was obscene. Or was it?

POET ON TRIAL is an account of Lenore Kandel’s fight for creative expression, concluding with the ultimate victory: the poet and booksellers prevailed. In 1971, the guilty verdict was overturned on appeal in federal court, and marked the last time San Francisco would prosecute an author on obscenity charges.

Directors: Katherine Clary, Emily Sternlicht