I recall similar projects, but none as widespread as the Telepoem Booth. This  brilliant interactive project is built around installations made from vintage phone booths. Users simply dial a number and listen to poetry. Even if you are not able to make a “local call” from one of the Telepoem Booths, you can use these directories to access over a thousand poems written and recited by regional, national, and international poets.

The project creators include Elizabeth Hellstern, fabricator and sculptor Owen William Fritts, and computer programmer David Earl Smith. The telepoem booth website offers this description of the installations:

– A multi-sensory community gift: visual, haptic and aural, multi-genre and multi-media. ADA accommodations provide poetry for all users, of all physical abilities.

-Poetry, art and music pieces that engage participation and feature community poets. Performance vehicle for voices of many kinds. Co-created with community.

The website also provide this history of the project:

The Telepoem Booth® art installation was created by writer and artist Elizabeth Hellstern, who currently resides in Santa Fe County, NM. We repurpose and re-enchant decommissioned (and disappearing) telephone booths to give back to communities in multi-sensory ways: visual, haptic and aural. Telepoem Booths are multi-genre and multi-media, using poetry, art and recordings to impact users. Most importantly, they are engaging art pieces that require the audience’s participation.

Telepoem Booths are provocative, exciting installation art pieces that place poetry in the public realm. They deliver an impactful emotional insight to each listener. Hearing poetry read can be cathartic and healing, providing a multi-sensory way for the public to access poetry and the human experience. Telepoem Booths give a performance vehicle for voices of many kinds.

Telepoem Booths are absolutely unique as they require the user to complete the creative cycle by interactively selecting a poem of their choice and physically dialing a phone. They are three-dimensional literary magazines that provide a contextual historical platform for poets and writers to (literally) be heard. And they activate, in every instance, a communal experience and excitement within the literary community where the booth has been placed.