What the hell is going on here?

Where Poetry and Art Meet Entertainment, Technology and Commerce

“serving the world poetry”

We're proud to announce the happy, kicking birth of a new species – a Home for Poetry.

After all, HEY! Poetry is no longer an elitist pursuit, anathema to real life, obscurantism on toast.

What we have here is a failure to not communicate. For as Language is the Essence of Humanity, so is Poetry, as practiced at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Essence of language.

In other words: Words.

We open at 9am on weekdays, 11 weekends. Through the front door, a small coffee shop serving great coffee and homemade-by-Timo sandwiches, soups, salads. We serve Sweet Love Blend coffee from Jim's -- we got some super micro sodas including the Bowery's favorite, Fizzy Lizzies. We been know to chow down on homemade chapbooks & spoken word CDs at the Bookstore– Poetry Served Here.

The full bar opens at 5pm for weekday happy hour 2-for-1's (unless there's an event). Our performance space holds up to 200, a state-of-the-art sound system with digital recording and cybercast facilities reside in our crow's nest sound booth.

Next door, our sister space, the Digital Video Dojo, world's first walk-in digital editing facility and school (coffee and nosheri proudly served by the Bowery Poetry Club).

The Club sponsors poetry events every night, workshops and readings in the afternoons.

For those who love bullet points, here's some highlight shows:

• Amiri & Amina Baraka and Blue Ark
• James Blood Ulmer
• Anne Waldman & Jim Carroll
• Uncle Jimmy's Dirty Basement
• The Taylor Mead Show, every Friday at 6:30
• Poetry + Kareoke = Fun, featuring Hal Sirowitz
• Ladies at the Mic
• Shaba Sher, Persian poetry & music
• Beatboxers Summit
• The Peoples Poetry Gathering
• Slam! Every Thursday with Urbana Three-time National Slam Champs
• Ed Sanders, John Giorno, Carl Hancock Rux, Toni Blackman, Tuli Kupferberg
• Rick Shapiro, the Lenny Bruce of Poetry
• Yusef Komunyakaa, Breyten Breytenbach, Jackson Mac Low
• The Segue Series, every Saturday at 4
• Praise Days: Bob Kaufman, June Jordan, Gregory Corso, Audre Lorde, Ted Joans, Dylan Thomas
• Emily Dickinson Marathon
• Bilingual Readings: The World of Poetry
• Eric Bogosian, Karen Finley, Danny Hoch, Sekou Sundiata, Sapphire
• Plus Poets' Soapbox (speak your mind in poetry), Open Mics, performance workshops, International Poets, Spontaneity, and Simply GREAT coffee

THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB revolves like a solar system around Bob Holman, the building's owner and the club's guiding light. In a recent profile of Bob in The New Yorker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote “he has done more for poetry in the bars than anyone since Ferlinghetti,” hearkening back to the famed impresario of the Beats. Holman has been making a living as a poet and running readings for 25 years, first at the St. Mark's Poetry then the Nuyorican Poets Cafe where he founded and MCed their infamous Poetry Slams from 1988-1996. He's also published seven books, created Mouth Almighty, the spoken word division of Mercury Records, produced poetry shows for PBS and MTV, and toured the world of Poetry Festivals and Readings. Dubbed a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" by the New York Times Magazine and crowned "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (New York Daily News), "Poetry Czar" (Village Voice), "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen), Holman will be the on site eminence gris grease that keeps the Club on time, just in time, for all time.

Come visit!