Martine Bellen

GHOSTS!

[Bellen's] gradual accretive methods and her early invocations of Sappho and Freud, should remind more than a few readers of H.D.; the foremother of lyric poetry sponsors Bellen's melancholy victory: "The daughter of God/ Chariot pulled by sparrows aquiver across high, steep air/ And none alive remembers you, gray among ghosts." This poet offers not smoothly finished, closed-off verbal objects but "Raw exposures, too contrasted to reckon/ Like sailing through a star." --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

2X(SQUARED)

Smart, funny, at once spare and lyrically lush, this mythic tale of a lost girl stalking her lost double will pull you delightedly along with its swift narrative—pull you up short when it makes you stop and think. Martine Bellen is an astonishing writer. —Rilla Askew, author of HARPSONG and THE MERCY SEAT

THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER

Martine Bellen's THE VULNERABILITY OF ORDER brings to contemporary poetics an acute, agile intelligence revealed in a dazzling array of linguistic orders, as vulnerable as they are powerful. --Ann Lauterbach

TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS

Out of the intervals, out of the body of words, arises a wonderfully rich music that "never stops being magic, not quite green but it created a before, a bus stop." --Rosmarie Waldrop ...A historian as steeped in the montage of character as Susan Howe or Guy Davenport. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

A New Opera in progress--MOON LADY

Please contact me for more information and to read the synopsis.

Moon Lady: The Story of Chang E--Libretto by Zhang Er and Martine Bellen

WORLD PREMIERE OF AH! WAS ON SEPTEMBER 16, 17, & 18 AT REDCAT, LOS ANGELES

AH! is inspired by THE DIAMOND SUTRA and explores the nature of impermanence, perception, duality, space/time, and faith/compassion. Language and music emerge from a common origin in AH! as wordsoundswordssounds is being realized in performances and interactive mobile media designed to reposition the audience's experience to the creation of the opera. The performances at REDCAT (see sidebar link) featured David Rosenboom (see sidebar link) and ten collaborating composer-performers: Ivan Carames Bohigas (Spain), Michael Foumai (US-Hawaii), Alex Kotch (US-North Carolina), Claudio Maldonado (Argentina-Patagonia),Vedran Mehinovic (Bosnia), Natalie Oram (UK), Doo Jin Park (Korea), Jeronimo Rachenberg (Mexico), Diana Syrse Valdes Rosado (Mexico), Xiaolang Zhou (China) and was directed by renowned experimental theater director Travis Preston (see sidebar link). The presentations of AH! were made possible by the generous support of The Evelyn Sharp Foundation and Transatlantic Arts Consortium. For more information visit: www.Ah-Opera.org.