We recently connected with Noel Martin and have shared our conversation below.
Noel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I think most people with a pull to the arts or anybody who wishes to creatively express, all have some level of ultra-sensitivity to this highly overstimulating world. Most of my childhood was spent bouncing between different avenues of the performing arts, I remember my grandparents putting on old movies in their living room, and I absorbed every layer of humor and charm, there’s a lot of truth to mimicking while you’re a kid, so I knew I had this readiness and hunger for telling stories and allowing the “imagination” to unapologetically play through me. I use this word “imagination”, or “imaginative”, in quotation marks because it implies a sort of need for some tangible element in order to make it real, I prefer thinking of our minds as channels for mystical traits that want so badly to be talked to and given a voice.
I grew up dancing, I loved the modern and contemporary styles because it took all of the rules in ballet and broke them, it taught me to get my hands dirty. After dance, I returned to my curiosity of film and theatre, I found it incredibly valuable reading all the classic scripts and plays, learning bits of psychology and philosophy through these great themes of grief, consciousness, love. I found a community in acting in high school plays, threading every character I’ve played with parts of my own questions about the world, it’s so important for teenagers to ask everything they want to know. Acting excited me to a point of discovering that all of the loose ends we experience in life, past, present, future, are begging to be challenged, we all are hungry for knowledge in some way or another, for me I spend most of my wanderings inside the cracks left unsealed.
I had written silently and privately throughout all of these eras of performing, I would’ve never danced, or acted, or sang, if it wasn’t for that very intimate relationship between my inner world and the words I’d write out on paper. I never shared any of my writing, seriously that is, until I was in acting school at Lee Strasberg. Some students would read their own diary entries or unfinished screenplays as monologues, and I remember going back to my tiny, east village studio one day after this very talented classmate of mine had performed her poetry in front of, probably the scariest teacher I have ever had, and I laid on my bed and thought “Damn! Why haven’t I been doing this?”.
To be frank, I didn’t put a lot of thought into the intricacies of how I could make this a career. I just so badly wanted, radically and limitlessly, to deepen my connection to my craft every single day and meet a plethora of cool people and intentionally feel inspired, until the day I die.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I co-own, alongside the lovely and beautifully gifted painter and artist Elena Redmond, Bimbo Rhetoric, a Brooklyn based publishing house. We aim to amplify local writers and artists, as well as embrace the complexities and opportunities in modern femme perspectives and the nuances of experimental literature.
In August of 2024, I released my first poetry collection in collaboration with Bimbo Rhetoric titled Aphrodite’s Drink Order. The themes focus on debauchery and divinity, and the crawls through girlhood.
Coming up this spring and summer we have another poetry collection titled Imaginary Archery Club written by the delightful Rob Hogan, and a nonfiction dissertation titled Forever Mediated written by the brilliant Ester Freider.
In addition to publishing written works, we also print and design our own zines made by Redmond and I, as well as bejeweled art objects such as lighters, a seashell from Rockaway Beach, and grinders.
What I’ve learned most throughout the makings of these projects, is to treat every idea with the same care and respect. If you think an idea is “bad”, it just needs time to marinate and rest, write everything down you will thank yourself later.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of what I do is hearing, or even seeing with my own eyes, how people and communities are being shaped in small ways. I was the only poet in my friend group for the longest time, now I’m surrounded by people who truly floor me with how enchanting and energizing their work is. I am so grateful to say that I share a platform to help other artists come forward. The first ways of communication in humanity came from music, drawings, stories shared by elders, dances and practices to further your understanding of nature and higher frequencies.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Honestly rummage your hands through any philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology texts right now. It is just as important to learning about your craft as taking a classes or a seminar. I really connected with The Symposium by Plato. Go to a used bookstore and pick out anything that seems interesting to you, or on a subject you truly know nothing about.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bimborhetoric.squarespace.com
- Instagram: @noelmartin333
Image Credits
nope all good!