Series of Giorno’s letter as Xerox copies, and ten audio recordings of WPAX radio, Hanoi, 1970-2006.

 John Giorno (born 1936) is an American poet, AIDS activist and fundraiser who is credited as the inventor of Performance Poetry. He was also the “star” of Andy Warhol's first film, Sleep. His interest in finding new audiences for poetry led him in 1966 to organize the artist collective Giorno Poetry Systems and, a few years later, the project Dial-A-Poem, first performed at The Museum of Modern Art, where answering machines would play new poems. The Giorno Poetry Systems record label focused on the innovative use of new technologies and published over 40 LPs and CDs, videos and films by artists working with music and performance.

 In 1971, Giorno launched a series of radio programs entitled WPAX. These were recorded in New York with social activist Abbie Hoffman, William Burroughs and other poets, to protest the war in Vietnam. The programs were broadcast on the North Vietnamese Radio Hanoi to American soldiers in South Vietnam.

 Giorno has produced a number of albums, tapes, videos and books, and continues to travel widely, performing his poetry, which is often characterized by his technique of repeating a line several times at a louder and louder volume. Giorno believes in moving the written word ‘out of the armchair and onto the road’, breaking down boundaries of oral and written poetry, and in working with the ‘momentum of sound’ and the ‘channeling of phrase’ to create either introspection or frenzy.
(FO, CNG)