Calls connect to poetry

OVER the course of the Hide and Seek Festival, you may have noticed a distinctive rotary phone cropping up in locations around the shire.

For those who picked up the receiver, these innocuous relics of bygone telecommunications were actually audio windows into the thoughts of a Barrys Reef-based poet.

Izzy Roberts-Orr’s Phone-a-Poem initiative, wherein listeners could listen to her works through the installation’s landline handset, is about inviting listeners into a more intimate space to engage with her craft.

“The core impetus is how do you get people to listen to poetry as it’s read,” she said.

“I’m particularly interested in audio storytelling as an intimate medium. I used to do lots of spoken word poetry gigs, and I always imagined a companion audio piece with the same intimacy.”

The project has been inspired by John Giorno’s 1969 Dial-a-Poem artwork, and the similar Netherlands-based Wonderfoon initiative which Roberts-Orr drew from directly to develop the installation.

Roberts-Orr debuted her Phone-a-Poem piece as a soft version in 2018 using IVR technology, as part of the Digital Writers Festival, before introducing a pilot installation at Lerderderg Library for World Poetry Day earlier this year.

Her latest iteration featured works from her debut poetry collection Raw Salt, released in February.

Throughout the Hide and Seek Festival, it could be found at the Bacchus Marsh Visitor Information Centre, Ballan Library, and the Blackwood Cemetery.

The latter is fitting considering a more recent influence on the project and its themes.

It was further developed once Roberts-Orr came across the Japanese wind phone, an unconnected telephone booth used to dial the dead.

“It’s a funny confluence of all these inspirations in Blackwood,” she said.

“When you’re talking to the dead in a poem, it very much feels like you’re talking to an unconnected phone booth; they don’t always speak back.

“There’s a section in my collection called Wind Phone which is exploring that idea. A lot of the works in my debut collection are elegies for my dad who died 12 years ago.”

Supported by Regional Arts Victoria and developed through Red Room Poetry, Roberts-Orr is looking to expand the project next year with another Phone-a-Poem installation, and will open submissions this month for regional poets to feature in the piece. “I hope the novelty breaks past the intimidation people have about writing poetry, either feeling it’s not for them or that they might not understand it,” she said.

“I’ll be working on receiving submissions over the summer period, and the poets will get paid to have their poem recorded and installed on the phone in time for World Poetry Day in March.”

Roberts-Orr’s callout is being preceded by two free online workshops, the second of which will be held on Tuesday 26 November.

To register, visit the Red Room Poetry’s events page on their website. Sign up to the non-profit’s newsletter or Roberts-Orr’s newsletter to keep updated about submissions opening.