Bob Holman

Founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and the author of 22 poetry collections (print/audio/video), most recently two books written 50 years apart The Unspoken (YBK/Bowery), Life Poem (YBK/Bowery) as well as Bob Holman’s India Journals (Rattapallax), The Cutouts (Matisse) (PeKaBoo Press) and Sing This One Back To Me (Coffee House Press). He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, NYU, Bard, and The New School. As the original Slam Master and a director of the Nuyorican Poets Café, creator of the world's first spoken word poetry record label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury, and the Founder and Artistic Director of the Bowery Poetry Club, Holman has played a central role in the spoken word, slam and digital poetry movements of the last several decades. All told, he has performed well over 1,000 times, around the globe, from Madison Square Garden and rock stadiums to church basements and Ethiopian Tej Bets (honey wine bars). Co-founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, Holman's study of hip-hop and West African oral traditions led to his current work with endangered languages. He is the producer/director/host of various films, including The United States of Poetry, a PBS series that aired nationally and won the International Public Television Award, directed by Mark Pellington and produced with Joshua Blum, and On the Road with Bob Holman. His film about language loss and revitalization, Language Matters with Bob Holman, winner of the Berkeley Film Festival's Documentary of the Year award, was produced by David Grubin and aired nationally on PBS. Holman traveled for the film and led workshops at language revitalization centers across Alaska and Hawaii, sponsored by the Ford Foundation; in 2022 he was invited by the Basabali Langauge Reclamation Society to screen it in Bali. His short film, produced by Steve Zeitlin of City Lore, Khonsay: Poem of Many Tongues, has lines of poetry in 50 languages, and premiered at the Margaret Mead Film Festival. In 2018, Holman was awarded He is also known for his ekphrastic poetry and performances, including Talking Pictures, a film by Kristi Zea of Holman performing his poems with the paintings of his late wife, Elizabeth Murray. At Sundance in 2023, a digital restoration of SLAM, the movie made by Marc Levin and starring Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn, was screened. The film originated at the Nuyorican Poets Café 25 years earlier when Holman was MC, a role he recreated live at Sundance. Holman’s poetry film, We Are the Dinosaur, directed by Paul Moon, featured at a dozen film festivals, was the basis of Holman’s 2024 tour of Oslo, Vienna, Tbilisi, and Tokyo. In 2025, he was selected by the Venice Biennale to perform his poetry on Venice’s streets, canals and bridges, as well as in theaters.