Pod People Unite for Poetry!

Poems, like songs, are compact, portable, well suited to the medium of podcasting, which allows you as reader/listener to assemble your own anthology/playlist of favorites & carry it with you for repeated hearings. No wonder so many poets who are hip to modern media have begun to offer podcasts online -- and now that there are thousands of podcasts, it’s a daunting task to locate the poems worthy of storage space on your iPod or other mp3 player. Searching for “poetry” on the various podcast listing sites turns up huge numbers of results: 200 at Podcast Alley & 530 at Podomatic — their quality, originality, production values & provenance varying quite as widely as in the world of little paper poetry journals.

That’s why a number of poetry podcasters in the U.S. & the U.K. have gotten together in the Association of Poetry Podcasting: to “turn up the volume and bring the most vibrant poetry more public attention.” There are some familiar names among the founders: Don McIver, with the official Poetry Slam, Inc. podcast, Larry Winfield’s Sundown Lounge, everyone from Rachel Kann to Jack McCarthy to Carl Sandburg at IndieFeed: Performance Poetry.