John Giorno

John Giorno was an American poet, performance artist, multimedia artist, and activist. A leading figure in the New York avant-garde, he was known for expanding the possibilities of poetry through sound, performance, recordings, telecommunications, and visual art. In 1965, he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting poetry through innovative media, and in 1969 launched Dial-A-Poem, a telephone-based poetry project that brought contemporary poetry to a mass audience.