Michael Baumann is a spoken word artist…
… and he has headlined at over 20 local venues, often engaging the community at arts festivals and coffee shops in Indianapolis, with performance poetry that encounters cultural themes such as sexuality, spirituality, sustainability, and their intersections.
A former professor in Marian University’s Communication Department, Dr. Baumann recently left this role to pursue art. Now a 2023-2024 Writer in Residence at The Learning Tree, he collaborates on ... view more »
I appreciate that, like fiction and fantasy, poetry often strives for distance from reality, either a little or a lot, through abstraction and figurative language. My work smacks deeply of the metaphorical, the confessional, the lyrical, and the surreal so that it might better invite my audiences (and I) to wrestle at a safer distance with difficult, complex, and often painful concepts, such as trauma, misogyny, anti-racism, and queerness.
My process begins on the page as I dream the scenes and sketch them into stories–often stories from my own life that ultimately I situate within the larger narrative of our society. While sketching, I introduce textual performance by evoking enjambment, sensory entendre, syncopated rhythm, and internal rhyme; as the poetry evolves toward its ideal medium on the live stage, I incorporate visual and vocal performance, favoring pantomime.
My artistic genre, spoken word poetry, is inherently social in two ways: first, spoken word is ideally performed live, the better to engage audiences in a social experience; second, like much literature, spoken word often offers social critique through its counter-cultural orientation and its inclusive nature. My current arts practice absolutely includes a social component, which is why I have been collaborating lately with community partners to create shows at local arts events, like Spirit & Place Festival and Indy Fringe Festival, and to offer creative writing programming at nonprofits like Indiana Youth Group.
The contents of my art have also tilted toward justice. My work has taken an ecocritical turn, and I have begun exploring identity-based trauma healing, especially, through pastoral settings such as the forest, the cosmos. I think the confessional genre that I often engage is suited for social justice because it situates personal narratives into our larger social story of, for instance, environmental justice, loneliness, addiction, and substance abuse recovery… so we can reflect and heal together. Performance poetry that encounters cultural themes such as sexuality, spirituality, sustainability, and their intersections.
Is There ‘Nothing New Under the Sun?’
May 3, 2024 at The Harrison Building
As a member of the 2023-2024 cohort, Indiana University and Herron School of Art + Design invited me to Religion, Spirituality, & The Arts (RSA). After seven months of seminars conclude, we are to exhibit installations in response to differing interpretations of The Book of Ecclesiastes.
My base hourly rate bills at $135.
2019 | Ph.D. English: Rhetoric and Composition, The University of Louisville
2015 | M.A. English: Rhetoric and Composition, Ohio University
2013 | B.A. English and Communication, Marian University
The Learning Tree
Indiana Youth Group
Indiana Writers Center
Marian University
IU Spirit & Place
IU / Herron School of Art + Design
Multiple local poetry slam championships
University of Louisville Department of English
2017 Barbara Plattus Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching
2016 Louisville Literary Arts scholarship for creative writing
Public Communication, Speech, and Debate League
2015 National champion (Graduate slam poetry)
2015 State champion (Ohio, Graduate slam poetry)
2015 National finalist (Graduate research paper, fifth place)
2015 State finalist (Ohio, Graduate research paper, third place)
National Forensic Association
2013 Semifinalist in rhetorical criticism
2012 Quarterfinalist in rhetorical criticism
Indiana Forensic Association
2013 nine-time state champion in individual speaking categories
Marian University, College of Arts & Sciences
2013 Outstanding Graduate in English
2013 Outstanding Graduate in Communication
2013 Dean’s Leadership Award
2013 Thoreau Award for Nonfiction