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Linda King
Linda King (born 1940) is an American sculptor, playwright and poet.[1] She is best known for having been the girlfriend of American writer Charles Bukowski for several years in the early 1970s.[2] Personal lifeBorn in 1940, King grew up in Boulder, Utah.[3] She first married early in life, divorcing after 10 years.[4] During the 1970s, King edited the literary magazine, Purr.[5] King was an actress before she became a sculptor and poet.[4] King has two children.[3] Relationship With Charles BukowskiIn 1970, shortly after the end of her marriage, King met Charles Bukowski and offered to make a sculpture of his head.[4] He accepted her offer, and they soon became romantically involved. King was 30 years old and Bukowski was about 20 years her senior when they started their relationship.[1] The relationship has been documented as volatile, turbulent and even physically abusive. On one occasion in 1971, Bukowski broke her nose during an argument.[4] On another occasion, King and Bukowski were accommodated at the City Lights apartment in San Francisco, after a reading at the City Lights Poets Theater.[6] By the following morning there was a broken window and a panel smashed in the door, and King had disappeared. Bukowski blamed her for the damage.[6] Bukowski's stage debut was as an actor in King’s play Only a Tenant in which she and Bukowski stage-read the first act at the Pasadena Museum of the Artist.[7] Bukowski and King finally split up for good in 1975, when one night an intoxicated King threw Bukowski's typewriter and books onto the street, angry at his infidelities.[1] The incident is detailed in Bukowski's novel Women, whose leading character, Lydia Vance, is based on King.[1] The same year, King left Los Angeles for Phoenix, because of what she described as "one extended nervous breakdown".[2] She said of their relationship:
After BukowskiKing remarried and had a third child. The marriage also ended in divorce.[3] She worked as a bartender, waitress, and a part-time care-giver for the elderly.[2] She sold her own traditional portrait busts in clay, and published poems. One in particular, printed in 1997, references Bukowski: "I am the woman who knows for sure that Bukowski's balls were bigger I am the woman who knows that he liked hot chilies in his stew".[2] In 2004, Phoenix's Paper Heart Gallery featured her paintings, busts and poems, along with documentary films about Bukowski, in a show entitled Friends and Foes of Charles Bukowski.[2] In 2009, she sold 60 love letters written to her by Bukowski at auction in San Francisco's PBA Galleries.[1] The same year, in order to be nearer to her grandchildren, King moved from Phoenix into an apartment in the Sunset District of San Francisco.[1] In September 2009, she was one of the three poets in the presentation Tales of Bukowski & the Late 1960s LA Poetry Scene: A Reading & Report by Key Poet/Participants at Bird & Beckett Books & Records in San Francisco.[5] In addition to her bust of Bukowski, King also sculpted busts of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Micheline, Harold Norse, and A. D. Winans. Her play Singing Bullets was staged as part of a showcase by Phoenix's Metro Arts Institute. King has also sold an edition of at least 15 bronzes of Bukowski.[1] BibliographyKing wrote a book Loving and Hating Bukowski.[1] She also has written seven collections of poetry:
Her poetry has been published in a wide variety of magazines, including The Bukowski Review and Wormwood Review. References
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