The Soul selects her own society,
then Shuts the door.
e. dickinson

Thursday, July 24, 2008

HairFlip Poetry Hotline.





The HairFlip Poetry Hotline




Step 1: Determine the purpose of your Hotline.



Who is Your Intended Audience?




Our intended audience will be for poets and people interested in poetry.

We are not limited to any specific kind of poetic readership. Anyone
interested in listening to us read our poems over the telephone or cellphone
is welcome to call. Callers will not be discriminated by age, ethnic background, religion, political views, artistic and poetic schools or preference.




What type of service will your hotline offer?




Callers may also read their poetry to us. The idea is to read our work in progress to each other. We are open and willing to provide personal critiques for individual poems that are read to us over the phone and would like the same from our callers. This will be an opportunity to provide space for open dialogue regarding poetry and poetics, exchange ideas, refer and site works (printed or online) of other poets whom we may or may not know. The conversation may also lead into various other art forms and tie back in to poetry/poetics. This hotline is also intended to provide an intimate platform of talking about poetry without any preconceived ideas about who the poet is. The caller may also remain anonymous. We are here to learn from you.


Will you hotline offer to send information packets to callers?




If the poet/caller would like a transcription of the conversation they are free to wire-tap the phone or tape-record. HairFlip can also take notes of the conversation and email them to the caller free of cost.




Step 2: Decide on the geographical area your hotline will serve and hours of operation.



Will the hotline be Centralized or Decentralized?




Depending on the volume of callers, HairFlip will begin with neither. We will first invite you to call our personal phone number since we do not have access or funding to centralized calling which would be toll-free. However, we will be in one centralized portable location since we will be using a cell-phone. A decentralized hotline would cost more money and require us to have several call centers across the county. A way for us to talk "toll free" would be by using your cellphone after 9pm-6am, depending on your carrier. We are using Cingular Wireless so if you call us from the same carrier anytime during the day, it can be considered toll-free.



Will Your Hotline have a Toll-Free number?


Kindly refer to paragraph above. We will not have a toll-free number as of yet.


What will be the Location of Your Hotline?




Since we are working from our cell-phone we can be anywhere. We may work from our home and/or any public space.



Do you Need a Multilingual Service?



We offer service in English, Spanish and a little bit of Tagalog.

We will consider more languages in the future if needed which would be wonderful.



What Hours Will Your Hotline Be in Operation?



Preferably, we would like to dodge daytime calling charges on our cell-phone.
But if its an emergency, we will make an effort to speak with you briefly during the day. Ideal times for calling are 9pm-6am which might also be limited since we do need rest.



Step 3: Determine the Management structure of your hotline.



Will Your Hotline partner with other organizations?




We would be happy to merge with other organizations (on and/or offline) that promotes the discussion and readership of poetry in any shape or form. This can be worked out. If our Hotline can be of benefit to any organization, we can try to work together with donor support.



Step 4: Determine the promotion and evaluation strategies for your hotline.



How will you promote your Hotline?



HairFlip will begin promotion by posting this outline on the HairheartsFlip blog at http://www.hairheartsflip.blogspot.com. We will also accept suggestions from our readers! We may also send out a mass email to friends and post them on bulletins on Myspace and Facebook. If you would like to help us in promoting the hotline, feel free to contact us by leaving a comment on the blog or calling our hotline number. We will gladly accept critical and positive tips on how to go about this.



How will you evaluate your Hotline?



Anyone interested in monitoring the hotline by assessing and providing quantitative data about calls and quality of service is welcome to do so. We have to figure out how this can be done through cell-phone use or perhaps tapping into our phone system which we would rather not.



Step 5: Set Goals and Objectives:


Goal

The Goal of HairFlip's Poetry Hotline is to provide a national telephone readership, listernership, a space to share information regarding poetry/poetics, and a mutual exchange of referral service of constructive criticism, ideas, and support for poets in this day and age.



Objectives



- To listen to anyone read their poems over the phone.


- To read our poems to anyone over the phone.


- To provide a space of intimate readership and critical listening of each other's poems.


- To provide dialogue regarding the poem if desired by the caller or dialogue concerning poetry and/or other.


- To provide each other up-to-date information regarding ongoing readings happening locally depending on where the caller is.


- To make the hotline accessible to poets or anyone with an appreciation for poetry in the USA.


- To provide a respectful, empathetic, and critical listening.


- To operate the hotline in a personable, light-hearted and humorous manner.





Operator is on standby. Call Flip at (818)282-5400.