The Dial-A-Poem Radio Marathon was presented at Red Bull Arts in order to revisit and update the original Dial-A-Poem and to celebrate John Giorno’s poetry. The first Dial-A-Poem (1969) was a series of phone lines which connected callers to answering machines with recordings of poetry, speeches, mantras, and sounds left by a number of poets and cultural figures such as William S. Burroughs, Anne Waldman, John Cage, Patti Smith, and others. In the case of my own contribution to the 2017 Dial-A-Poem Radio Marathon, I performed a piece entitled “Pronunciation Wrong Bad (for John Giorno).” The piece was built around spoken variations on repetitions of the following phrase:

Good morning John Giorno buongiorno John Giorno pronunciation wrong bad.

The work was meant as a tribute to Giorno’s poetry, but taking the repetition to a level of further absurdity.