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The Be Blank Consort was born in June 2001 at The Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL) when all of its members were part of a literary residency convened by Richard Kostelanetz. They are all writers, but they all use language in greatly expanded and often completely new ways and contexts. The Consort was formed to perform various kinds of texts, many of them created collaboratively, in ways that would reveal new resonances and possibilities in them. Some of the pieces are poems that were written by one of them and scored for multiple voices by another. A few are entirely written and scored by one person. Many more were written in collaboration between one or more of the performers and others. The goal is to highlight language as music and sound, in addition to its function as a carrier of meaning, and to this end, they have devised various strategies of simultaneity, breaking up of lines, stretching out of words, choral arrangements, and many others. All of them are also visual poets, and many of the pieces designed for performance are also visual poems, in which guise they take on a whole new life.
The Be Blank Consort has performed in New York City, Miami, Minneapolis, Boston, Columbus, and other venues. They have produced a CD, SOUND MESS + OTHER POEMS, released by Luna Bisonte Prods, StampPad Press, and Press Me Close Eds in 2003.
Some of the members of The Be Blank Consort are:
John M. Bennett has published over 200 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press), Mailer Leaves Ham (Pantograph Press), Loose Watch (Invisible Press), Chac Prostibulario (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press), Historietas Alfabeticas (Luna Bisonte Prods), Public Cube (Luna Bisonte Prods), and The Peel (Anabasis Press). He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide. He is editor of Lost and Found Times, and Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions.
Bob Grumman has been publically blank for some twenty years now (although he self-published Poemns, a little collection of visual poetry, in 1966). He has been most notably blank in recent years as a visio-mathematical poet, but is probably best known as a columnist for Small Press Review, where he writes reviews of otherstream poetry. He also does a column for Lost & Found Times, and runs the Runaway Spoon Press, which he began in 1987. He supports himself as a substitute teacher at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Florida, which is across the Peace River from Port Charlotte, where he lives with a cat, four bicycles, a xerox and two computers.
Scott Helmes is a poet, artist, photographer and architect who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Starting in 1972, he began writing experimental poetry, pursuing mail art activities and producing artistic printmaking/drawings. His poetry has been published world wide and collected in numerous anthologies and museum archives. Recent exhibitions of his prints include the 4th Minnesota National Print Biennial, Minnesota; Art on the Plains #7-Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota; and Print National 2004-Lancaster Museum of Art. Through StampPad Press, he has published visual poetry and The June 30th Manifesto. His writing archive is collected in the The Ohio State University Libraries.
Carlos Martínez Luis was born in La Habana, Cuba. He graduated from the Universidad de La Habana in 1955. He served as Director of the "Meeting Point" art gallery in Miami, served as Executive Director of the Cuban Museum in Miami, and lectured in the humanities at St. John Vianney College Seminary, from where he retired. He now lives in Miami. He has published nine books, and his works have appeared in magazines throughout the Western Hemisphere. As a visual artist, he has had four one-man shows in Miami, and been in collective shows in Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, and Switzerland.
You will need an MP3 player to hear the visual poems read, such as the free Winamp.