Martine Bellen

AH! opera no-opera at REDCAT, Sept. 2009

Hans Balmes and Martine at the International Lyric Festival in Frankfurt.

View of Lake Como from Martine's studio in Villa Serbelloni (Bellagio, Italy) where Martine worked on anime poems.

Composers-musicians at Idyllwild Arts, CA, summer 2008, first workshop of the Counterpoint of Tolerance Project, developing a version of AH!, see homepage for more details. photo credit: Jana Morlan

James Graham, artist of "Adventures of Monkey God" paintings before "Pigs and Pies in Tutus."


Biography


Martine Bellen is the author of six collections of poetry including THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER (Copper Canyon Press); FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE MONKEY GOD (Spuyten Duyvil); TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS (Sun & Moon Press), which won the National Poetry Series Award; and PLACES PEOPLE DARE NOT ENTER (Potes & Poets Press). A bilingual collection of her poetry has been published in Germany by Verlag im Waldgut (translator, Hans Jürgen Balmes). She has written the libretto for OVIDIANA, an opera based on Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES (composer, Matthew Greenbaum) that has been performed in New York City and Philadelphia. She has collaborated with David Rosenboom on AH! OPERA NO-OPERA, a pioneering collective work, that's been co-composed and performed by creators from around the globe. Its world premiere was in September 2009 (for more information, visit www.ah-opera.org) at REDCAT in L.A. Her novella 2X(SQUARED) is forthcoming in April/​May 2010 from BlazeVOX [books].

Ms. Bellen’s poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, including SAINTS OF HYSTERIA: A HALF CENTURY OF COLLABORATIVE POETRY (Soft Skull Press), IN OUR OWN WORDS: A GENERATION DEFINING ITSELF (MWE), THE CONVERGENCE OF BIRDS: WRITING INSPIRED BY JOSEPH CORNELL (DAP) and THIS ART (Copper Canyon Press). She has been a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, and the American Academy of Poets Award. Bellen is a contributing editor of the literary journal CONJUNCTIONS.