"SHOOT THE POEM!" Poetry Video Festival
Ten filmmakers/video artists selected by Charles Dennis are commissioned to create ten Poetry Videos with ten poets selected by Bob Holman, Artistic Director of Bowery Arts & Science. Charles Dennis is a dancer turned videographer, and has participated in Bowery Arts and Science's "Talk Talk Walk Walk" Poetry Dance Festivals. This year, David Spelman will collaborate with Dennis and Holman to select ten musicians to complement each of the videos.
SHOOT THE POEM! premiered at the Bowery Poetry Club on May 28th, 2006.
Directors
Bob Holman: 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. The series he produced for PBS, the United States of Poetry , features over sixty poets. Holman co-edited Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (also from Holt), winner of the American Book Award, having helped reopen the Cafe in 1989, where he ran the infamous Poetry Slams through 1996. Holman fronts poetry into daily life by all means. His current work for the People's Poetry Gathering is focused on the poetry of endangered languages. He is also poetry guide at About.com (poetry.about.com), consistently a banner site with 7,000 "Museletter" subscribers and 35,000 hits/week.
Holman was founding editor of the NYC Poetry Calendar (1977), curated reading series at St. Marks Church (he worked at the Poetry Project for seven years), the Whitney Museum, the Public Theater, and other locales. Since 2003, he has taught Exploding Text: Poetry Performance at Columbia University, as a graduate course in the School of the Arts. Holman is also the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club. Bob Holman has spent a life in poetry, and the Club, with a coffee shop, bookstore, bar and performance space, is its physical realization. The non-profit organization, Bowery Arts & Science, Ltd., works with the Club for educational, outreach, and technological pursuits. Open door twixt art and technology, content and media. In short, the Bowery Poetry Club is poised to be the nexus of the new poetry for the new century.
Charles Dennis: Charles Dennis is an interdisciplinary artist/producer, videographer and teaching artist. He is also a choreographer and performance artist whose work integrates dance and performance with media. Charles Dennis has been documenting the New York City downtown dance & performance scene since 1989. He specializes in affordable multi-camera video shoots and digital editing for artists and non-profit organizations. Charles Dennis is also the director and producer of "Alive & Kicking", a video series which profiles cutting edge dance and performance artists which is being distributed to educational institutions worldwide. 80 programs have been produced to date
Charles Dennis collaborated on the video design for choreographer Neil Greenberg's "TWO", presented at DTW in 2003, which was cited as one of the 10 best dances of 2003 by The New York Times,".Neil Greenberg used video (by Charles Dennis) to expand and revitalize the stage space, making it an exhilarating element".Charles Dennis is also a gifted teacher who has taught workshops in dance, performance art and video in a wide variety of venues. He is currently on the teaching artist rosters of the Educational Video Center, Inc. and the Lincoln Center Institute in New York City.
David Spelman: David Spelman is the co-founder and artistic director of the New York Guitar Festival. For ten years, David Spelman & Company, a New York-based public relations firm, represented major players in the music industry such as PolyGram Classics & Jazz, RCA/BMG Classics, The New York Philharmonic, The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Columbia University School of the Arts. He worked for a year with publicist/producer Jay Hoffman, and before that as an apprentice luthier, training in acoustic guitar design, construction, and repair.
Spelman currently serves on the Board of the D'Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts and served for five years on the Board of Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that, for 100 years, has been producing free concerts at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. Spelman is an alumnus of the New England Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
our programs
Bilingual Reading Series/World of Poetry
Bringing together poets and translators from all over the world, the bilingual poetry reading series seeks to enhance and broaden the international conversation between poets, to increase awareness of the range of poetries being written, to offer visiting writers a venue for their work and to create a vibrant intellectual space for the dialogue of ideas across linguistic and cultural lines.
We invite readers to attend bilingual readings where they can not only learn about the poetry of another country and meet contemporary poets visiting from other places, they can understand the larger context in which the poetry they read (and, perhaps, write) is functioning. It is our hope that the series not only provides listening pleasure, it fosters meaningful and lasting international dialogue between artists. Taking advantage of New York City's diversity of cultures, we are in contact with poets around the world through cultural organizations such as embassies and cultural councils, as well as ongoing translation projects such as Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.com), and a range of magazines and presses dedicated to translation.
Bringing together poets and translators from all over the world, the bilingual poetry reading series seeks to enhance and broaden the international conversation between poets, to increase awareness of the range of poetries being written, to offer visiting writers a venue for their work and to create a vibrant intellectual space for the dialogue of ideas across linguistic and cultural lines.
We invite readers to attend bilingual readings where they can not only learn about the poetry of another country and meet contemporary poets visiting from other places, they can understand the larger context in which the poetry they read (and, perhaps, write) is functioning. It is our hope that the series not only provides listening pleasure, it fosters meaningful and lasting international dialogue between artists. Taking advantage of New York City's diversity of cultures, we are in contact with poets around the world through cultural organizations such as embassies and cultural councils, as well as ongoing translation projects such as Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.com), and a range of magazines and presses dedicated to translation.