DIAL-A-POEM

Long before social media, the multimedia performance poet John Giorno, once the toast of New York City’s underground spanning Andy Warhol’s Factory, the punk rock revolution and the Beat Generation, created a free zone of radical poets and socio-political activists available at the end of a phone line — Dial-A-Poem. 

Beginning in 1969, Giorno offered his hypnotic brand of mantralike sloganeering, with Beat Gen friends such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs joining the fun, before opening Dial-A-Poem to next generation writers like Patti Smith and Amiri Baraka.

“I didn’t know what I was doing when I first did it,” he told me before 2017’s  I ♥ John Giorno, a city wide tribute to his art and influence. “I had rubber-band legs, weak knees, forced the air out, and did it; all heat, breath and panic.”’

Along with upgrading poetry as multimedia performance — he gigged at venues like CBGB and hosted events at his Bowery home, The Bunker — Dial-A-Poem became a beacon of progressive thought, a meeting space for provocation with new poems every day, and across 24 albums on his Giorno Poetry Systems label (G.P.S.). He continued to sprinkle his magic until his passing in 2019. 

“Dial-A-Poem was meant for the entire universe, never just one place or one realm,” he told me.

To that end, a re-awakened Dial-A-Poem is now available at 1-917-994-8949, and accessible online at Dial-A-Poem.org with old and new recordings by poets, artists, musicians, and activists, along with international editions, where speakers read their work in the language native to their country. Online, just hit the black headset icon and out come different poems, still with the analog vibe of its origin. 

Dial-A-Poem currently offers prose, mantras, and calls to action by a chorus of voices from Brazil, France, Mexico and the US, and new international editions from Italy, Thailand, Switzerland, and Hong Kong will start in 2026. 

Talking about Dial-A-Poem’s “magic randomness,” G.P.S.’s latest artistic director Anthony Huberman told the New York Times, “It’s all about the voice.”