Since cell phones, telephone booths have become artifacts of obsolete telecommunications. In the Telepoem Booth®, the pulse technology of the rotary phone and dual-tone multi-frequency of the push-button phone are re-invented as a communication tool and answered with poetry recordings on mp3 files.

Telepoem Booths were created to honor the “lost object” of telephone booths and to highlight the intimacy of communication created with recordings of poets reading their own poetry. Each “caller” is important to the creative cycle of the art piece, as they choose their own Telepoem number and make their own free phone call. We will combine this unique delivery method with oral histories and poetry in the Telepoem Booth® Acequia del Madre to highlight the importance of Taos’ water culture of the Acequia del Madre del Río Pueblo.

The Telepoem Booth® Acequia del Madre will feature poems collected from local poets revolving around acequia culture. This Telepoem Booth® will also feature snippets and summarizations of the essays included in the Acequia Aqui booklet and the recorded voices of the “faces of the acequia”.

Telepoem Booths are aural, kinesthetic, haptic and interactive art pieces that highlight the literary and communication arts. They are inclusive of all voices and bring word off the page and into a meaningful experience. The Telepoem Booth® Acequia del Madre will consist of one ADA compatible vintage telephone booth with rotary phone. The artist will be on site to dial numbers for those that are physical unable.

Dialing up and hearing the actual voices of the poets, essayists and “faces of the acequia” in the Telepoem Booth® Acequia del Madre will build upon the lessons and information collected in Phase One of the Paseo Project and provide a multi-media way for participants to understand the historic downtown acequia network.

Acequia Aqui Featured Artist, Sponsored by The LOR Foundation

About the artist: Elizabeth Hellstern is a writer and an artist, working to make word as interactive as possible. Her artwork includes national placements of the public art installation the Telepoem Booth®, where members of the public can dial-a-poem on a phone in a vintage phone booth. She is the author of the experimental poetry flow-chart series, How To Live: A Suggestive Guide from Tolsun Books and the editor of Telepoem Booth® Santa Fe: Collected Calls from SkyHeart Editions and Telepoem Booth® Anthology: A Celebration of Phone Booths and Poetry forthcoming from SkyHeart Editions. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. Her multi-genre writing work has appeared in journals such as Hotel Amerika, American Journal of Poetry, North Dakota Quarterly, Slag Glass City, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Tusculum Review, Inner Child Press, New World Writing and Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Her creative projects have received funding from the Santa Fe Commission for the Arts, the Knight Foundation, Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and New Mexico Humanities Council. She lives in Cerrillos with her partner in an off-grid shipping container home.