By Katie Haegele
Type the word poetry into a podcast directory search and you'll get
about 140 results, often more. Some poetry podcasts are based at
institutions and have money behind them, such as Poetry Off the Shelf, which is
produced by the Poetry Foundation, the publisher of Poetry magazine.
Likewise, Jim Lehrer of the PBS program NewsHour hosts a poetry series
that features readings and interviews with nationally known poets.
But individuals with an interest in poetry have found the medium
accessible enough for them to make programs, too. From bedrooms and laptops
around the world people are recording podcasts, registering them with
directories such as iTunes, promoting them, and garnering a listenership
- all for very little money.
The result is a wealth of listening options with all the ingenuity and
quirky appeal of ham radio.
Wess Jolley, who goes by the nickname Mongo, has produced the IndieFeed
Performance Poetry Channel (http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com)
from his home in Vermont since January 2006. He makes some of the
recordings himself, but many of the tracks he features were recorded and
submitted by the poets themselves.
With about 270 episodes to date - each consisting primarily of one poet
reading one poem - the show features a variety of poetic styles, from
Alix Olson's nearly-sung "Daughter," which has a musical accompaniment,
to Jeremy Richards' funny and stylistically spot-on parody piece
"Sylvia Plath's Gangsta Rap Legacy. " And as the popularity of his program
grows, Mongo faces the same problem editors of small poetry journals do.
"I usually have huge backlogs of pieces I need to review, and it can
now take a couple months or so after I get a submission before I can get
back to the poets. And I'm turning down a ton of work now, some of it
very good," he says.
Other podcasts are primarily a vehicle for one poet to share his own
work. Thom Ingram does the program Poet Guru (http://poetguru.com/), and
each installment is a recording of one of his new poems. Ingram says
part of the appeal of podcasting for him is the immediacy of the medium.
"I can write a poem, have it up and get some feedback in a matter of
days. What I used to do was to write something and run down the hall, in
college, into one of my friends' rooms and say, Here, read this. . .
. I would rather be writing, and then moving onto the next poem. "
Still others have a structure more closely resembling a traditional
radio show. Bodies at Rest (http://www.bodiesatrestonline.com/) is an
hour-long program that combines music and her own and others' poetry in
what creator and host Donna Kirven calls her "small niche of relaxation
spoetry" - spoetry being "the consummate marriage of [traditional] poetry
and spoken word. "
Not surprisingly, poets who identify as spoken word, slam, or
performance poets are a significant presence in poetry podcasting.
Slam Idol (http://slamidol.btpodshow.com/) is an eclectic showcase of
performance poetry produced by Simon Toon, an IT manager who lives in
London. The Sunday Times called the show "routinely excellent. " The most
recent episode features several lively takes of a recorded interview
between a poet named Gordon Buss and Gary Annal, an MC from Liverpool.
("Right, OK, this is an interesting question: Are you a poet? " "No. ")
But Slam Idol's main attraction is the contest. Anyone may submit a
recording to be played on the show and entered in the competition, and the
winner is chosen by listener votes.
"I love the variety, from world champion slam poets recorded performing
live on stage, to shy amateurs whispering into a microphone in their
bedroom," Toon says. So far he has hosted 17 poetry slams in audio
format and two in video format.
When he was new to podcasting, Toon promoted his program and Web site
by doing a banner exchange with fellow poetry podcaster Will Brown,
whose show Cloudy Day Art (http://www.cloudydayart.com/) includes poetry
performances, discussions about craft, and interviews.
Toon says an "organic community" of poetry podcasters grew around their
initial partnership, and in July 2006 they launched the Association of
Poetry Podcasting (http://poetrypodcasting.org/) with 10 founding
members. They now have 33 members in all.
Brown, the Cloudy Day Art podcaster, enjoys the accessibility of the
medium, but he doesn't consider it his mission as a podcaster to
circumvent traditional poetry forums.
"Our foremost goal as poets who podcast, blog, and self-publish should
be to simply connect people to poetry. Anything else that results is
just the fruits of the seed we are planting," Brown says. "Publishers of
poetry magazines, books, and anthologies have a specific audience in
mind with a specific taste in poetry. People subscribe to and buy them
because they have found a single source for the style of poetry and poets
they are into. What we in the new media are doing is providing another
medium for poets to find listeners, and for listeners to find poets
they may have never had the chance to hear. "
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