Giorno Poetry Systems

“…one of the reasons for Giorno Poetry Systems: if you don’t do it yourself, nobody is going to do it for you.”—John Giorno

Giorno Poetry Systems was an artist collective and non-profit organisation run by poet and performance artist John Giorno with the aim to connect poetry (in various forms) to a larger audience. Giorno realised that, at the mass market level, poetry was running behind other arts. He reasoned that artists in music and paiting etc., would act whenever an idea arose in their minds, while the availability and progression of poetry was limited to books and magazines, let alone multimedia or performance. JG wanted to change this situation by communicating to his audiences through everyday means such as telephone, television, and records. Giorno started to explore tape and phonograph recording, with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, using a variety of tape experiments such as loops and cut up techniques.

Enter the Dial-A-Poem Poets
Giorno initiated the the Dial-A-Poem Poets concept, which he claimed would later influence the creation of information services over the telephone, such as sports and stock market. Fifteen phones were connected with individual answering machines: people would call and listen to poems they were offered from fragments of various live recordings. The GPS poets were the rock stars of poetry—sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. When GPS was starting out, it was largely made up of Giorno’s friends – William S. Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, John Cage and a few others. As the phenomenon spread, poets, artists, and musicians joined up with GPS in droves. Artists like Lou Reed, David Johansen, Nico and Patti Smith worked alongside Burroughs, Ginsberg, Giorno and Lydia Lunch, appearing on Dial-A-Poem and on many of GPS’s albums. Several of the New York downtown rockers got involved in collaborative projects with GPS poets.

In 1978 the Nova Convention, a three-day tribute to Burroughs that crowned him patriarch of heroin and wisdom, featured performances by Patti Smith, Frank Zappa and many others, including Laurie Anderson, who made her debut public performance. This was one of the highlights of GPS – this was also available on record and is considered by many to be the best example of verse based art in the seventies.

John Giorno has stopped publishing audio, in fact this happened just as cd recordings were becoming commonplace. This is a shame because the artists that were recorded by GPS are some of the most influential artists of their time. Lately, Giorno is focused on writing and performing. He has hosted many charitable benefits in recent years, particularly for AIDS research.

Following are a few sound files or GPS these were gotten from the always amazing UBUWEB web site.

David Johansen – Imagination Cocktail
William S. Burroughs – Dinosaurs
Jim Carroll – A Peculiar Looking Girl
Exiled in Domestic Life – John Giorno
Excerpts from Silence – John Cage