Bob Holman, Naked Night

American, b. 1948, playing from New York City, NY, USA

Bob Holman, founder and artistic director of the Bowery Poetry Club, is a poet most often connected with the oral tradition, live voicings of poetry, and poetry in digital media: spoken word, performance, hiphop, slam, poetry films, endangered languages. Dubbed "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (NY Daily News), "Poetry Czar" (Village Voice), and "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen Magazine). He has published sixteen books of poetry if you include CDs and DVDs, which he does, most recently Sing This One Back to Me (Coffee House), which includes his first poem written in Welsh and translations of Griot songs of West Africa as sung by Papa Susso. His three-part TV series exploring Endangered language and culture in West Africa and Israel, "On the Road with Bob Holman," aired on LinkTV. Holman founded and ran the first major spoken word label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury; produced the award-winning Public Broadcasting System series, The United States of Poetry; and was the original Slammaster at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. For the past decade, Holman has devoted much of his time to endangered languages, including the two-hour PBS special Language Matters with Bob Holman, produced by David Grubin. He has two daughters and a son and lives on the Bowery where he is a beekeeper, with three hives on the roof of the Bowery Poetry Club.

www.bobholman.com

Thoughts on Telephone process

Playing Telephone is like talking to the world. eg, Me: Hello, World? World: Hello! What took you so long?