Please visit The Phone Book for our full directory of poems. Here you will find the telephone numbers for specific poems in our Dial-a-Poem app. You can also generate a random poem by dialling ‘0’.
Listen to and read original poems on the theme of calling by poets from around the world and discover new work by award-winning writers exploring communication in the digital age. Developed by Nottingham Trent University and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Dial-a-Poem is a free resource that invites you to reflect on the poetry of the telephone.
Dial-a-Poem celebrates 50 years since John Giorno’s public art project launched in New York City. Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem connected callers to answering machines playing recordings by poets such as Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and Patti Smith. 2020 will see the service re-wired across several platforms: a mobile-app, a sound installation in the City of Nottingham and a nationwide competition.
The resource gives you free access to over sixty new poems by contemporary award-winning writers from Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Reflecting on the relationship between poetry and calling, and read aloud by the authors and translators, these poems invite you to think about how we talk, text and listen across borders.
It features newly-commissioned work from Claudia Berrueto, Vahni Capildeo, Rachael Boast, Amy Sara Carroll, Rishi Dastidar, Bruno Galluccio, Lisa Kelly, Raquel Lanseros, Janet McAdams, Andrew McMillan, Abi Palmer, Anita Pati, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Denise Saul, Nick Sturm, Chrissy Williams, Lyuba Yakimchuk, and Ather Zia, as well as the winning entries of a national poetry competition.
You can access these poems from our ‘Dial-a-Poem’ app, which is now available for free from Google Play and the App Store. From the Home screen, dial ‘0’ to read and hear a poem at random, or search our Phone Book for the direct number of a poet or poem of your choice.
