the bowery poetry club
"serving the world poetry!"
www.bowerypoetry.com
308 Bowery, NYC
Bob founded the Bowery Poetry club in 2002. The first event, “Praise day for Gregory Corso,” was held when the space was still under construction. At one point Bingo Gazingo bumped against a ventilator and was covered with white dust.
Having previously worked at the Saint Marks Poetry Project and the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Bob was ready to tell an origin story of his own club. First step: secure the space. He had recently done some programming for Phil Hartman, creator of Two Boots Pizza, to open a jewel box movie theater behind his combo pizzeria/VHS rental storefront. Speed Levitch took movies and Bob took poetry. It nworked! Bob was ready to take on a venue.
How to secure a space for poetry? He asked Phil who his real estate agent was! Unwilling to hand over his ace, Bob Perl, who would later become Bob’s friend and board-mate at HOWL, Phil sent Bob off to Herb Stender, the lone-wolf atheist Rabbi of the Lower East Side real estate world. Herb was surprised when Bob showed up in person at his tiny office in Chinatown, behind a laundry. But they got right to work. “Do you want the property to be vacant?” asked Herb. Having never thought about this, I answered “why not?” “Do you want to serve alcohol?” Herb continued. “How else could a poetry club pay the rent?” I responded. Leaping from his chair, Herb declared, “you have just cut your possibilities by 50%.”
No matter. Just a couple weeks later Herb called: “I think I have something. 308 Bowery, just above Houston. Can you meet me there now?” And I was there, meeting Mark Turkel in his formica tabletop factory. The building looked like it hadn’t been touched in 50 years -- heated by pot-bellied stoves with the table-top wood scraps used for fuel.
Laying out my plans for a poetry club made Marc laugh. “Well,” he said, “the Bowery has been good to me.” We shook on in at Herb’s insistence, and the deal was done. Now all that had to happen was finding some way to pay for it, which took many months, lots of dead ends, and then a team of investors. My wife, Elizabeth Murray, wanted to have an Art Wall in the club, and she had achieved enough success so that we could pay for it. While the building was still under contract, I had to go to the community board and try to get a liquor license. Like everything else in NY, it meant burrowing through bureaucracy. A partner, Josh Blum, needed a space for his Washington Square Films. Josh and I had just finished the 5-part series, “The United States of Poetry” for PBS, and he’s still on the second floor.
The club opened as a completely curated poetry destination, with different poets curating each night’s main event. The coffee shop opened at 10am; the first poetry event was at 6 during the week and noon on the weekends, and the evening would often include 4, even 5 different events, with hip-hop shows going until 4am. Taylor Mead did a show every Friday at 6pm, and his book, “A Simple Country Girl,” was the first book published by Bowery Books. The second was a collection by our bartenders, who would stand on the bar and read their poetry between shows. Remember Shappy (RIP)? Moonshine? Laurtel Barclay? Gary Glazner? Other shows in those Origin days: Bingo Gazingo, Tuli Kupferberg, Free Style Fridays with Toni Blackman, The Mike, Beau and mUms show with Mike Ladd, Beau Sia and mUms the Schemer (shhhhh!). The Urbana Slam, that had begun as the Mouth Almighty team that won the National Poetry Slam in 1997.
To Be Continued -=- your memories are requested
The Bowery Poetry Club is one New York City’s major cultural innovations of the new Millennium. At a time when Arts organizations are in chaos, it leads the way. Bob Holman is an outstanding poet, a visionary and community minded, just as Joe Papp was. He will set the standard for a whole new way (and a very traditional one) of bringing the performing arts back to where they belong…accessible, for all ages, of many different artists from varied genres rubbing shoulders with one another and having direct contact with their audience, always communicative, reflecting the poly-cultural treasures that make New York City a great place to be.
— David Amram, from “why I am playing the bowery poetry club”
MAILING
Bowery Arts & Science
310 Bowery, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10012
Bowery Poetry Club and Bowery Arts and Sciences, ltd. are supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of NY Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional support from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City City Council and New York City’s mayor.