You have heard of Podcasting, but have you heard of Poetcasting? Alex Pryce has come up with an inventive way of combining podcasting with the latest poetry.
In a world always on the move, podcasting – a rapidly expanding online medium – has liberated audiences from the need to congregate for radio programmes or TV broadcasts. Not only can audiences access and download programmes to watch at their convenience, they can also download a range of online voices and ideas from beyond mainstream media.
Now a young poet, Alex Pryce, from Bangor, Ireland, has taken advantage of the versatility of podcasting and come up with a new way of bringing the voice of poetry to a wider audience. The aptly named Poetcasting project is a neutral space for poets of all kinds to record a high-quality portfolio of work as podcasts. The website has at its core the philosophy of featuring both performance and published poetry without bias, giving both varieties an equal space, presenting them in the same format. The poems are performed by their authors and recorded as podcasts – nothing more and certainly nothing less – with each poet limited to four poems which, the website states, should be neither ‘experimental’ nor ‘for performance only’. For, in the case of performance poetry, audiences that did not attend the poetry slam event may not have the opportunity to experience the work of these poets. Podcasting brings performance poetry to a wider audience, by allowing them to download the podcasts of the performance and listen at their leisure. The project acts to bring together the two distinct types of poetry – performance poetry and published poetry – into one accessible medium. The website, which has been running since April 2007, is now inundated with poets, with many more yet to be recorded.
Poetcasting responds not only to the needs of audiences in presenting them with previously unheard poetry, but also to the needs of firmly established poets and new talent. Alex was keen to include poets of diverse backgrounds and ages to ensure that Poetcasting included as broad a selection of poets as possible. As a consequence, Poetscasting not only goes towards addressing the issue surrounding access to performance poetry, but also the difficulties faced by younger poets in getting known. As well as older poets – whom, she quotes, are the ‘foundation upon which the next generation of poets are founded upon’ – the website includes younger, less established poets. Alex, a young poet herself, has cleverly exploited the flexibility of the Internet and of podcasting as a medium to include the up and coming new voices in poetry, who may be facing difficulties in being published, alongside the established and well-known voices*.
The website has received excited reactions from readers and poets alike, with interest expressed by poets such as Dorothea Smart, a performance poet who uses both Standard and Caribbean English in her poetry” Simon Perril, a published poet whose poem The Immigrant Song inspired by the immigrant centre outside of Cambridge, has been recorded on the website” and young poets such as Izzy Galleymore and Caroline Bird, currently studying at the University of Reading and Oxford respectively.
The other highlights of the website include podcasts from the Rise London Wide Youth Slam 2007, a ‘youth development slam’ which was supported by the Mayor of London and featured entrants between 11 and 18 years of age. In mid-January 2009, Poetcasting hosted a recorded version of Pomegranate an online poetry magazine aimed at up-and-coming poets less than 30 years of age. Poetcasting will be recording 18 of the best young poets in the UK as an audio version of the webzine.
With plenty of fine new and established talent, the Internet surfer would struggle to go far wrong. In order to sample this cornucopia of the latest poetry, the surfer need only make use of the on-site search engine either to search for known poets or to browse the accessible format and explore previously unknown voices. For the poet, there is a rich resource of poems that lend themselves well to the potential cross-fertilisation of ideas between published and performance poets who may otherwise struggle to inform or inspire each other’s poetry. Poetcasting’s neutrality is ideal for the inclusion of diverse numbers of poets, making the site a truly creative space on the Internet. The recordings feature no advertising, only the poetry, with the project being dependent on funding from the Arts Council England.
Ultimately, Poetcasting is not just an achievement in bringing closer together the different mediums of published and performance poetry, and a diverse range of poets, but also the achievement of a young woman. The force behind Poetcasting, Alex Pryce, is a 20-year-old poet studying English Literature at the University of Leicester. Alex single-handedly travels the country to record in some highly unusual places and capture some of the best poets out there to keep the website freshly stocked with new material – all of this on top of keeping up with her academic studies. Recognition for Alex’s hard work in creating and maintaining Poetcasting came when she received the Culture Woman of the Future Award in November 2008, making Alex the youngest in the category of culture to win this award. If this was not enough, she was noted as ‘one to watch’ by the art judges. Alex Pryce commented on receiving the award: “The arts has historically been a man’s world – we haven’t even had a female poet laureate yet – so it is fantastic to be recognised”**.
With Poetcasting going from strength to strength (111 poets currently recorded), the future looks to be bright for both Alex and the project. Alex’s work so far has been of great benefit to the breaking down of creative barriers within poetry and to intelligent use of new technology, as well as demonstrating that poetry is well and truly alive as a spoken form of entertainment.
If you are a poet and would like to get involved with Poetcasting, you can contact Alex Pryce through the Poetcasting website www.poetcasting.co.uk for more details. If you are a poet enthusiast and want to keep up with Poetcasting, you can join the growing online community of poets and poetry lovers – the site has a presence on three of the main social networking sites Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter.
*Pryce, Alex, Interview, The Cadaverine
**Pryce,Alex www.alexpryce.com
