Bob Holman
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Image:BobHolmanNewYorkCity2006.JPG Bob Holman is a poet and poetry activist in the United States.
not to be confused with Bob Holman, the former professor of sociology who gave up a distinguished academic career to live and work for 20 years among the poor on Easterhouse estate outside Glasgow in Scotland
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[edit] Career
Bob Holman's first poetry job was with the CETA Artists Project which led to his running the Monday Night Series at the St Mark's Poetry Project and to his becoming the Coordinator there. He was instrumental in the reopening of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and was the original slammaster there. He is now the proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, where he hosts regularly. He co-founded the NYC Poetry Calendar with Sara Miles and Susie Timmons in 1977. He is one of the poetry guides at About.com. He is generally credited with bringing the poetry slam to New York City, where he and the New York poets have been responsible for its penetration into the mass media and commercial markets.
Holman was one of the founders of Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, with Bill Adler and Sekou Sundiata. He has taught at the New School, Bard College, and at the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia.
He is married to Elizabeth Murray and has two children.
Bob Holman is a controversial figure on the Slam poetry scene. His take on Slam is democratic. The process involves choosing several judges who would then give scores to poets: style of presentation and acting ability often outweighted other aspects of the poems. Holman was able to interject into the process tidbits about the types of poems presented, and would often choose poems the audience did not like as exemplemary. Some, including Marc Smith, father of the poetry slam, have said that Holman brought out the worst parts of poetry slams, including commercialism (his poetry label, Mouth Almighty, sponsored a team in the 1997 National Slam. It won.), whimsicality (he coined "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.
Holman has directed many 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. The Bowery Poetry Club, which he founded and is the proprietor of, is a one-of-a-kind, international, eclectic, downhome, open space for all manner of poetries.
From his website (www.bobholman.com): "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, 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, Henry Holt
- Beach Simplifies Horizon, 1998, The Grenfell Press
- A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, 2003 (a collaboration with Chuck Close)
[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
[edit] References
- The Spoken Word Revolution. Ed. Mark Eleveld. New York: Sourcebooks, 2003.
- All Poets Welcome Daniel Kane, California, 2004.
