The Be Blank Consort was born in June 2001 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, Florida) when core members John M. Bennett, Kathy Ernst, Scott Helmes, and Michael Peters were part of a literary residency convened by Richard Kostelanetz. Members of the Consort are writers, but they are writers using language in greatly expanded and often completely new ways and contexts. The Be Blank Consort was formed to perform both texts and visual texts, many of them created collaboratively in ways that reveal new resonances and possibilities. In January 2002, Scott Helmes initiated the first poems designed for performance by the BBC. Some of the earlier pieces were poems written by one member and scored for multiple voices by another member—while some were entirely written and scored by one person. Many more were written in collaboration between two or more of the performers. People that have performed—often more than once—with the Be Blank Consort include Sheila E. Murphy, C Mehrl Bennett, Michael Basinski, mIEKAL aND, Wendy Collin Sorin, Geof Huth, and the Post-NeoAbsurdists among many many others.