The world’s largest book fair, Frankfurter Buchmesse, once again opened its doors from October 15–19, 2025, in Frankfurt, Germany—welcoming dreamers, storytellers, and innovators from around the globe. Known as the beating heart of the publishing world, this grand event gathers more than 7,500 exhibitors from over 100 countries, along with an expected 280,000 attendees and 10,000 media professionals. It’s not just a fair—it’s a global celebration of literature, culture, and creativity.
This year’s fair was extraordinary, with over 4,000 seminars and roundtable discussions spotlighting the future of books and storytelling. From bold new voices to legendary authors, the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 continues to serve as the ultimate hub for discovering fresh perspectives and timeless tales.
As the fair celebrates another successful year of bringing together the brightest minds in publishing, Citi of Books proudly joins the festivities at this year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse, showcasing inspiring titles from its talented authors.
In collaboration with Citi of Books, the author of “Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye,” Clive Matson, held a successful book signing event during the 77th Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Clive Matson, a longtime resident of Oakland, California, has spent decades immersed in the vibrant and often turbulent world of Beat poetry. His deep roots in the movement have earned him significant recognition: in 2012, the City of Berkeley presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry, and in 2021, the National Beat Poetry Foundation honored him as a Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate.
Matson’s poetic journey began in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he studied under some of the Beat generation’s most iconic figures—Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners, Michael McClure, Herbert Huncke, and Diane di Prima, who once remarked that “his poems speak directly to the heart.” A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, Matson later taught creative writing at UC Berkeley Extension and remains actively involved with Wordswell, a collective dedicated to publishing art, prose, and poetry.
His most recent collection, “Hello, Paradise, Paradise, Goodbye,” delves into timeless themes of paradise lost and paradise found, echoing the grand poetic tradition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where the struggle between loss and redemption defines the human condition. The title phrase, repeated throughout the book, becomes a rhythmic invocation—an acknowledgment that paradise is ever fleeting, constantly arriving and departing. Matson’s frequent use of repetition—phrases like “Hello, Paradise” and “Goodbye, Paradise”—serves as both structure and meditation. Much like Ginsberg’s refrain of “holy” in “Footnote to Howl,” Matson’s repetitions create a pulse that drives meaning deeper with each echo.
In his poems, Matson bids farewell to conquerors and tyrants alike—“Goodbye, Columbus, Captain Cook, Spain and the conquistadores”—and calls for the undoing of figures such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Trump. His stance transcends politics; he aligns himself with the earth and the Republic of Poetry, advocating for compassion, sanity, and renewal. In other works, he explores modern consciousness through poems on “meds,” cataloging the many names for marijuana—ganja, mary jane, sour diesel, Thai, and more—blending humor with cultural insight.
“Hello, Paradise, Paradise, Goodbye” stands as a continuation of the Beat legacy that Matson inherited and has made his own. Across 37 poems, including “Money and Apocalypse,” “Money, Anxiety, Boots,” and “Poverty and the Trance,” the collection offers sharp observation, humor, and a haunting awareness of the planet’s fragile state. Matson’s final plea reverberates long after the last page: “End the madness. End the madness.”
