Residency #132
FEBRUARY 16 – MARCH 8
Application Deadline: CLOSED

BOB HOLMAN, poetry

Bob Holman is best known as a free-wheeling impresario of new poetry, appearing on MTV's "Spoken Word Unplugged," HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and producing the award-winning PBS series "The United States of Poetry." He created the seminal poetry label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury, administered St Mark's Poetry Project and Nuyorican Poets Café. He's dogged by the moniker "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen) and is a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" (NY Times) for his part in popularizing the raucous, populist poetry slams. He has written eight books, most recently A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (2004), a collaboration with Chuck Close published by Aperture, teaches at NYU and Columbia, has a new CD ("The Awesome Whatever"/Bowery Books) and is the Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. He's made recent trips to the Kolkata Book Fair, Banff Arts Centre, the Costa Rican International Poetry Festival, and the Naropa Summer Writing Program. His new project is a documentary on the Poetry of Endangered Languages, and another on Ginsberg in India (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhKjp33SCa8) which is to say that his take is wide-open, engaged, and moves all directions simultaneously as the Poetic Economy ballets the Horrific Triumph of Capitalism. (http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Holman/Holman-Bob_She-Never-Called-Me-Back.mp3)

Residency Statement
This residency is devoted to you and your art, and from that start point to us and ours. We will use orality/performance as Inspiration Peaks, but text is an equivalent Launch Pad; we'll have goals of books and performances, maybe with our co-residents in other genres. While poetry will be central, all manner of writing and performing enjoys this rubric IMHO, so don't be off put if your line breaks don't. We'll work a couple hours a day, with one day a week devoted to individual meetings. I lean towards late afternoons to gather. Expect to learn how to use a studio as a tool for writing.

Application Requirements
Send me some work, text &/or digital, and tell me what you're interested in, who you're reading/watching/listening to, who your influences are. If it's a link or CD/DVD: under 3 minutes. Text: 5 pages maximum. Include a bio/resume with a project you are working on or would like to.