Editorial Note by Max Wallis

Michael Horovitz (1935–2021)Synagogue Music was one of Michael Horovitz’s most urgent and unflinching late poems; a lament and interrogation of inherited law, identity, and generational dissonance. The audio in this post is from a reading by his son Adam Horovitz live in Bermondsey in 2023, the poem now resonates with added force as both protest and elegy.

With characteristic wordplay, rage, and compassion, Horovitz questions the rigidities of tradition and the burdens passed from father to son, elder to youth. Its final cry, in this extract from Michael’s long, unpublished poem—"No wonder / the young want out"—still echoes in a world reckoning with division, dogma, and the cost of obedience.

This is Michael at his most vital: provocative, prophetic, and still asking the hardest questions.

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About Michael Horovitz:

Poet, artist and impresario Michael Horovitz (1935-2021) helped bring poetry out of the hallowed halls it hid in the 1950s into pubs, clubs and concert halls. Founder of avant garde magazine New Departures, and the Poetry Olympics, he championed poetry, and collaboration between poets and other artists, until his death.

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