Bob Holman
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Bob Holman is a poet and poetry activist in the United States.
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[edit] Career
After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, Bob Holman founded, with Sara Miles and Susie Timmons, the NYC Poetry Calendar, a free monthly publication with all the readings and poets "on the same page." This led to his first poetry job in 1977: with the CETA Artists Project, the largest federally-funded artist project since the WPA. This in turn led to a run coordinating the Monday Night Series at St. Mark's Poetry Project and his later becoming the Coordinator there.
Holman was instrumental in the reopening of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1987[1], and was the original slammaster there[2]. He is generally credited with bringing the poetry slam to New York City, where it eventually penetrated the mass media and commercial markets.
Holman was intitially a controversial figure in the poetry slam scene. Some, including Poetry Slam founder Marc Smith, had said that Holman brought out the worst parts of poetry slams, including commercialism (his poetry recording label, Mouth Almighty, sponsored a winning team in the 1997 National Slam), whimsicality (Holman coined the phrase "the best poet always loses," and created the "Hideous Sudden-Death Haiku Overtime Round" for ties), and a who-cares attitude. Others felt he brought a sense of irony and openness, as style of presentation and acting ability sometimes served to outweigh other aspects of the poems.
In 2002, Holman founded the Bowery Poetry Club[3] in New York City, where he is the proprietor, and regularly, host. The Bowery Poetry Club is home to a weekly poetry slam called NYC-Urbana, held on Tuesdays. In a 2005 interview, Holman said,
| “ | ...[Y]ou have to have a slam! If you have a poetry club, you have to have a slam! It's that simple. You have to have an open mike. You have to have a slam. You have to have readings in languages other than English. You have to have poetry with music, and you have to have poetry with dance. You have to have poetry with film. You have to have hip-hop. These days... what you have to have, what is essential to the wellbeing of any poetry club, is to have a slam.[4] | ” |
Holman has directed plays for poets' theater, including work by Alfred Jarry, Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Mayakovsky, W. H. Auden, Edwin Denby, John Ashbery, Robert Kelly, Ed Sanders. He appeared in the improvisational opera "Mirror Man" by David Thomas of Pere Ubu. Holman was one of the founders of Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, with Bill Adler, Jim Coffman and Sekou Sundiata.
Teaching positions have included The New School and Bard College; currently, he is a Visiting Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts and at New York University. Along with Margery Snyder, Holman is one of the poetry guides at About.com.
He was married to artist Elizabeth Murray, who died in 2007. They have three children.
From Holman's website ([5]):
"From Slam to Hiphop, from performance poetry to spoken word, Bob Holman has been a central figure in the reemergence of poetry in our culture. Recently dubbed a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" by the New York Times Magazine and featured in a Henry Louis Gates, Jr. profile in The New Yorker, Holman has previously been crowned "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (New York Daily News), "Poetry Czar" (Village Voice), "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen), and “this generation’s Ezra Pound,” (San Francisco’s Poetry Flash). His latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, was first exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during the Venice Biennale and will be published by Aperture in fall 06. The TV series he produced for PBS, “The United States of Poetry,” won the INPUT, International Public Television Award; he founded Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, the first ever major spoken word label, in 1995; ran the infamous poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café from 1988-1996; and was a host/administrator at the St. Marks Poetry Project 1977-84. He is currently Visiting Professor of Writing at the Columbia School of the Arts and the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Founder/Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, and Artistic Director of Study Abroad on the Bowery, a certificate program in applied poetics."
[edit] Bibliography
- Bicentennial Suicide: a novel to be performed, 1976, Frontward Books
- The Rainbow Raises Its Shoulder/When A Flower Grows 1979, Chinatown Planning Council
- Tear To Open, 1979, Power Mad Press
- 8 Chinese Poems, 1981, Peeka Boo Press
- SWEAT&SEX&POLITICS!, 1986, Peeka Boo Press
- Cupid's Cashbox 1990, Jordan Davies
- Bob Holman’s The Collect Call of the Wild 1995, Henry Holt
- Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, editor, w/ Miguel Algarin, 1996, Henry Holt
- In With the Out Crowd 1996, produced by Hal Willner, Mouth Almighty/Mercury
- Beach Simplifies Horizon, 1998, The Grenfell Press
- A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, 2003 (a collaboration with Chuck Close), published by Aperture, 2006
- The Awesome Whatever, 2007, Produced by and with music by Vito Ricci, Bowery Records
[edit] Filmography
- Panic*DJ! Bob Holman Live at the Club LaMama - 1990
- The United States of Poetry- PBS. Directed by Mark Pellington. Produced with Josh Blum.
- Slam - 1999
- SlamNation - 1998
[edit] External links
- The Fales Library Guide to the Bob Holman Audio/Video Poetry Collection
- bobholman.com
- Audio of ""She Never Phoned Me Back," "Poetry By Numbers," "After Li Po" "Whatever I Was Thinking Of" and "Disclaimer" (among others) on Indiefeed Performance Poetry Channel
- Bob Holman on creativity, an interview with about-creativity.com
- Interview with Bob Holman, by Monica de la Torre for the Brooklyn Rail
[edit] References
- ^ Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. "CHAPTER 3: Getting a Roof On It; The Reopening of the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe." Soft Skull Press. ISBN 1-933-36882-9.
- ^ Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. "CHAPTER 4: Birth of a Movement; NYC Slam's First Year." Soft Skull Press. ISBN 1-933-36882-9.
- ^ Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. "CHAPTER 26: What the Heck Is Going On Here; The Bowery Poetry Club Opens (Kinda) for Business." Soft Skull Press. ISBN 1-933-36882-9.
- ^ Aptowicz, page 280.
- ^ Bob Holman
- bobholman.com
- The Spoken Word Revolution. Ed. Mark Eleveld. New York: Sourcebooks, 2003.
- All Poets Welcome Daniel Kane, California, 2004.
