Telephone Books and Magazine (by item)

Telephone Books and Magazine (by item)

This is a list of Telephone Books and magazine titles available as individual items. 

Telephone magazine ran for 14 years, from 1969 to 1983, with 19 issues. The magazine began as a means to publish lesser-known poets from Owen's home base in New York City, where she moved in 1968 with Lauren Owen (who was from Tulsa, and suggested they move to the city to see friends Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Ted Berrigan). With the support of Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin, and Tom Veitch at The Poetry Project, Owen learned to run the Gestetner mimeograph upstairs in the church. There, she printed the first eight issues of the magazine, typing up the stencils in her railroad apartment as she raised her two sons.

Owen's vision for Telephone was for it to be a literal telephone book of poets, including as many people as possible. At times containing up to 90 contributors, approx. 630 unique contributors appeared in the magazine over the years. Many of these contributors later had their manuscripts published as Telephone Books, an imprint that Owen began in 1972 and continued well into the 2000s, with a shared mission to publish experimental and under-published work and distribute it generously.