John Bloomberg-Rissman was born in Chicago but has spent most of his
life in Southern California. A graduate of UCLA, he has worked as a gardener,
in a bakery, in publishing, in a rubber stamp factory, as an architectural
drafter, as a freelance writer, and as a librarian. He has had two careers as a
poet. In the first, 1968-1990, he was a lyric poet. Finding the lyric mode
deeply unsatisfying, he went silent for a decade. In 1999 he began writing
again, or, rather, collaging, mixing, sampling ... He has spent the last dozen
years or so working on a long project called Zeitgeist Spam. Parts published so
far: No Sounds of
My Own Making (Leafe Press, 2007), Flux, Clot &
Froth (Meritage Press, 2010), and the text in A Picture of Everyone
I Love Passes Through Me (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2016). He is finishing up
the next part, In
the House of the Hangman, which has turned into a 2,000,000-word metatext.
Additionally, he “authored” the “conceptual” work 2nd Notice
of Modifications to Text of Proposed regulations: Regulation and Policy Branch,
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Leafe Press &
Laughing Ouch Cube Publications, 2010). He is also the editor or co-editor of
several volumes: 1000
Views of “Girl Singing” (Leafe Press, 2009), The Chained Haynaku
(Meritage Press & xPress(ed), 2010, co-edited with Eileen R Tabios, Ivy
Alvarez and Ernesto Priego), Poems for the
Millennium 5: Barbaric, Vast & Wild (Black Widow Press, 2015, co-edited
with Jerome Rothenberg). His reviews appear regularly at Galatea Resurrects,
and he blogs at Zeitgeist Spam (www.johnbr.com).