Harold Norse, who died on 8 June, 2009, aged 92, was a poet of the beat generation who later became known as a leading gay writer.

His work was characterised by a use of everyday, conversational language and imagery.

He was the author of 12 books of poetry and was nominated for the US National Book award in 1974.

He was born Harold Rosen to an unmarried Russian Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn in 6 July, 1916.

He studied at Brooklyn College and was editor of the college literary magazine. He met and began a relationship with Chester Kallman, poet and WH Auden 's future partner, and became one of New York's 'inner circle' of poets.

He was also associated with William S Burroughs , Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso whom he spent time with while living in Paris in the early 1960s at the so-called 'Beat Hotel'.

In the 1970s his collection Carnivorous Saint marked him out as a preeminent American gay liberation poet. He was a winner of a National Poetry Association award and received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

His career's work included experimental prose novels, memoirs of his literary life and famous friends, and collections of correspondence with the same. His life's poetry was collected in the 2003 volume In the Hub of the Fiery Force.