Bob Grumman

Bio

Born 2 February 1941, Norwalk, Connecticut. Graduate of California State
University, Northridge, with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Currently
works as a substitute teacher at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda,
Florida. Began composing visual poetry around 1965, and made his first
mathematical poem sometime in the early 1970's.  Participant in
international mail art since 1985. Represented in a number of museums
and archives devoted to concrete and visual poetry. Considerations of
work have appeared in Meat Epoch, Factsheet Five, Taproot
Reviews and elsewhere. Reference books concerned with him and his
visual poetry include Volume 25 of the Contemporary Authors
Autobiographical Essays series (Gale research, Detroit: 1996) and A
Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Schirmer Books, New York: 2000).
Has recently (late in 2001) become more concerned with exhibiting his
works as a visual artist than publishing them as a poet.

Lives at 1708 Hayworth Road, Port Charlotte FL 33952.

Professional Positions

Columnist for Lost and Found Times, 1994-2005
Contributing Editor for Small Magazine Review, 1993 to present 
Contributing Editor for Poetic Briefs, 1992-1997
Columnist for Factsheet Five, 1987-1992
Publisher, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1983 to present
Co-Editor  with Crag Hill of two anthologies, Vizpo auf Deutsch
(1995) and Writing To Be Seen (2001) 

Professional Affiliations

Member, National Book Critics Circle, National Coalition of
Independent Scholars

Shows

IV Bienal Intemacional de Poesia Visual Experimental, 1993 Moterrey,
Mexico
Paradise Mail Art Exhibition, Belfast, Ireland, c. 1995
V Bienal Internacional de Poesia Visual/Experimental, 1996, Mexico City
Visuelle Poesie, Berlin, 1997
Eye Rhymes, Edmonton, June 1997
VI Bienal Intemacional de Poesia Experimental, 1999, Mexico City
02txt, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2002
An American Avant Garde: Second Wave, Ohio State University
Libraries, Columbus, Ohio, 2002
Writing To Be Seen, New York Center for Book Arts, 2002
Writing To Be Seen, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis,
February 2003
WordSeen Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami, March 2003
Unreadable, Atlanta, August 2004
Summer Showcase, Arts & Humanities Council, Port Charlotte, Summer
2004
Visual Poetry (Vispo) Durban Segnini Gallery, Miami, March 2005
Subtropics Festival, Dorsch Gallery, Miami, March 2005
Infinity, Dudley House, Harvard, Cambridge, March 2005
Gallery 308, Minneapolis, (upcoming May through August 2005)


Publication Credits

Score, Kaldron, Lost & Found Times, Modern Haiku, The
Experioddicist,
Transmog, Meat Epoch, Industrial Sabotage, The Subtle Journal of Raw
Coinage, Juxta, The New Orleans Review, Kalligram (Budapest,
2000), Das Haupt (Kiel, Germany, 1995), Freie Zeit Art
(Vienna, 1992), Sub Bild (HeidelBerg, 1991), Das Haupt
(Kiel, Germany, 1995) and numerous other zines and magazines. Also
poetry (mathemaku) and a critical essay (on contemporary minimalist
poetry) on-line at Karl Young's light&dust website, and entries (on
Visual Poetry, Richard Kostelanetz, and a poem by E. E. Cummings) in
The Facts On File Companion to Contemporary American Poetry
(2005) and (on Mathematical Poetry, Infraverbal Poetry and numerous
poets) in A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes.

Books

Poemns (privately-printed, 1966; reprinted by the Runaway Spoon
Press, 1997)
A StrayngeBook (Score Publications, 1987)
An April Poem (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1989)
Spring Poem No. 3,719,242 (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1990)
Of Manywhere-at-Once (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1990; 2nd
edition, 1991; 3rd edition, 1998) 
Mathemaku 1 - 5 (Tel-let, 1992)
Mathemaku 6 -12 (Tel-let, 1994)
Of Poem (dbqp press, 1995)
Mathemaku 13 - 19 (Tel-let, 1996)
min. kolt., matemakuk (Budapest: Kalligram, 2000)
Xerolage 30 (Xexoxial Editions, 2001)
Doing Long Division in Color (The Runaway Spoon Press, 2001)
Mathemaku 20 - 24 (Tel-let, 2003)
Cryptographiku 1 - 5 (Tel-let, 2003)

Anthologies

Visuelle Poesie aus den USA (Germany: 1995)
a haiku celebration of fall (Napanee, Ontario: Haiku Canada, 1996)
WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY (London:
Writers Forum, 1998)
Loose Watch (London: Invisible Books, 1998)
The Secret Life of Words (San Diego: Teaching Resource Center,
2000)
Another South (Tuscaloosa AL: The University of Alabama Press,
2002)

Workshops and Lectures

Swampfest, Madison WI, 1990
University Club, Port Charlotte, 1995
Books and Books, Coral Gables FL, April 2002
Miami Dade Community College, September 2002
Miami Art Museum, in conjunction with Beyond Geometry
Exhibition, October 2004 

Brief Artist's Statement

I've long composed visual poems--poems, that is, that do things visually
that are as important as what they say verbally. In the past few years, I've
become almost exclusively a composer of mathematical visual poems--
visual poems, that is, that are as mathematical as they are visual and
verbal.  My aim with these "mathemaku," as I call them, is to play
mathematical elements off the (hopefully rich) sensory effects of painted
images and poetic phraseology. My main hope for them is simply that they
come across as visually appealing. But it'd be great if they also jolted an
observer or two into interesting new experiences beyond the visual alone--
or the verbal or mathematical alone.