Charles Potts

Charles Potts (born August 28, 1943) is an American counter-culture poet. He is sometimes referred to as a projectivist poet and was mentored by Edward Dorn. Raised in rural Mackay, Idaho, Potts left Pocatello, Idaho and Idaho State University in the mid '60s and set out for Seattle, Mexico, and ultimately the location where he rose to literary prominence: the countercultural hotbed of Berkeley, California. There, he founded the Litmus literary magazine and the Litmus publishing company, which published his friend Charles Bukowski's book "Poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window". Potts' gives an account of his time as a revolutionary hippie in the Berkeley poetry scene, and a psychotic breakdown he suffered there, in his two-part memoir Valga Krusa. In the '80s Potts moved to Walla Walla, Washington where he later founded The Temple bookstore, Tsunami Publishing, and The Temple Literary Magazine. Potts' biography is also of record in the Marquis publications, Who's Who in America, 1977, Who's Who in the West, 1996, Who's Who in the World, 1996, and Who's Who in Finance and Industry, 1998.