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ABOUT MARK D. RANSOM

Poet, sculptor, photographer, actor, playwright, performance artist, writer: A 44-year-old native of Staten Island living in Brooklyn, Mark D Ransom earned his BA in English/Writing (Poetry genre) from the City University of New York. His eclectic work background has taken him through the produce section of a supermarket and selling ladies shoes at a mall to extensive exterior masonry restoration of the Empire State Building and now civil service. 

On the amateur level he's worked in radio, film, video and stage and in the past studied with established writers like Cherry Fine and Chocolate Waters on writing poetry and getting published. Presently he's under the tutelage of Joan Larkin and producing his own spoken word CD of selected work written over the past twenty-five years. While performing in the mid-90's at such venues as The Red Room @ Reckless in Hell's Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Biblios, The Nuyorican Poets Café and many others, he developed a unique style. His poetry fuses rock and folk music lyrical influences with post-apocalyptic images of urban renewal and decay while integrating sound collage and tonal ambiguity into the mix. 

He's honed his performance and communicative skills under the supportive eye of E. Katherine Kerr and her Creative Explosion. In collaboration with such musicians as Tony Noe, David Cooper, Pablo Cubarle, Paul Rebhan, and visual artist Saeri Kiritani, the spoken word CD Wild Iron Freedom is his most recent accomplishment. Other endeavors include having his plays read at the Square Peg Theater Collective, writing with The Badlands Theater Company and being a guest vocalist with Miss Babs and the Kicking Boogie Band. His film-noir style cinematic debut in The Brotherhood directed by Adam Grable and starring David Mazzeo can still be seen on i-film.com. 

"On September 11th 2001 I witnessed the barbaric carnage and destruction of downtown Manhattan. The magnitude of this experience has forever altered my life and given me an urgency to produce as much healing as I can. Long ago, painted on the side of a wall at Allen and Delancey Streets, I read such eloquent words, which said in effect that it is the job of the artist to repair our world from all of the horrible damage man has inflicted on it. This is my mission, to participate in that process."