Bob Heman

Bob Heman has been writing prose poems regularly for over forty years. Besides his Dr. Cone pieces, his prose poems include “The Serpent Variations,” a long series that bounces off of the legends of the serpent and the garden; “Lore,” a short series inspired mostly by fairy tales; “Footnotes For the Future,” a series written using an experimental process [collected in 2019 in The House of Grand Farewells, published by Luna Bisonte Prods]; and his ongoing “Information” series.

His prose poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Sentence, The Prose Poem: An International Journal, Caliban, Otoliths, Paragraph, Quick Fiction, Hanging Loose, Artful Dodge, Skidrow Penthouse, and First Intensity. They are included in the anthologies A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press), An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), and The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press). His collections How It All Began and Demographics, or, The Hats They Are Allowed to Wear are available as free downloads from Quale Press.

During the late 1970s he was artist-in-residence at the Brooklyn Museum. His collages, drawings, and “participatory cut-out multiples on paper” have been featured in a small two-man show at the Museum and included in group shows in Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. A one-man retrospective of his “cut-outs” was shown in 1979 at the Downtown Cultural Center, an exhibition and performance space operated by BACA, the Brooklyn Arts and Cultural Association (now known as Brooklyn Arts Council, or BAC).

Since 1971, Bob Heman has edited CLWN WR, formerly Clown War, one of 84 “important magazines” honored with annotation in The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History (Pushcart Press, 1978). Among its special issues were Ted Berrigan’s Carrying a Torch, F.A. Nettelbeck’s Bar Napkin Poems, and the Selected Prose Poems of Belgian Surrealist Paul Colinet.

He has lived in Brooklyn for most of his adult life.