Ever since it starred in the momentous 1970 MoMA show “Information,” about Conceptual art conceived for a newly dawned mass-media age, Dial-A-Poem has been a source of fascination—and more than a little fun—for followers of poetry in the expanded field. The conceit of the work, created by downtown New York artist and connector John Giorno in 1969, is simple in an analog way: dial a phone number, hear a reading of a poem. Now it has followed the march of so much other content to a new home online.
Clicking on the rendering of an old phone with a thick curly cord calls up randomized readings of poems created for the early days of Dial-A-Poem as well as newer ones written, recorded, and transmitted in the decades since. A small sample set gathered on the site’s first day includes “To the National Arts Council” by Peter Schjeldahl, “What You Should Know to Be a Poet” by Gary Snyder, “Ohio, Your Dogs Need You” by Muhammed Zen Siddiq Yusef Ibrahim, and “Uma tese curiosa: a cidade do homem nu” by João Paes. Other poets who have contributed include Laurie Anderson, Juliana Huxtable, William S. Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale, and many more. (The early version that figured in the 1970 MoMA show was so inclined toward “radical” poets that FBI agents supposedly spent a day at the museum listening in during the run of the exhibition.)
The new online version—created by Giorno Poetry Systems, which maintains its late namesake’s vision with contemporary programming focused on performances and events of different kinds—includes poems written for recently added international editions of Dial-A-Poem in France, Mexico, Thailand, Italy, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Brazil. The poems are recited in their native language, with subtitles but no translation. The Brazilian version is supported by art collector Pedro Barbosa, who is presenting the project in a space affiliated with the Coleção Moraes-Barbosa in São Paulo.
As Barbosa told the New York Times, “We thought a lot about how you achieve different audiences. Someone in the middle of the Amazon jungle can dial the number and have access to a poem.”
