Poetry Reading | Poets Bob Holman and Thomas Fink read their work

Perhaps best known as a leader of the spoken word poetry movement, including slam and hiphop poetries, Holman recently published his fifteenth book, Picasso in Barcelona (Paper Kite Press). This follows A Couple of ways of Doing Something, a collaboration with Chuck Close (Aperture) and Crossing State Lines: An American Renga from Farrar Strauss (co-editor). He teaches at Columbia and NYU and is a founder of the Bowery Poetry Club where he serves as Artistic Director. He is a proponent of poetry-media collaborations, producing five seasons of "Poetry Spots" for WNYC-TV, winning three Emmys; his five-part PBS series, The United States of Poetry, won an INPUT (International Public Television) Prize. He was the host of MTV's "Spoken Word Unplugged," appeared on "HBO Def Poetry Jam," and created the first major spoken word record label, Mouth Almighty/Mercury.

His current mission is bringing attention to Endangered Languages -- half the languages on earth will disappear this century. His 3-part series on this subject, "On the Road," is available on LinkTV, and he is in preparation for "Word Up!", a 90-minute special for PBS. Recent travels have been to Wales (he is learning Welsh), and to the griots of West Africa and their counterpart, the azmaris of Ethiopia. He is co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance.

Thomas Fink was born in New York City in 1954. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including most recently Peace Conference (Marsh Hawk Press, 2011), Clarity and Other Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, 2008), and a book of collaborative poetry with Maya Diablo Mason, Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010). A Different Sense of Power: Problems of Community in Late-Twentieth Century Poetry (FDU Press, 2001) is his most recent book of criticism, and in 2007, he co-edited Burning Interiors: David Shapiro’s Poetry and Poetics (FDU Press). His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007, and his paintings hang in various collections. Fink is a Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia, and lives in New York City.