The Poetry Foundation Commits Its Expertise to Podcasting
And it’s leading the way for a wave of other cultural institutions
If the late 2010s have taught us anything about media, it’s to be suspicious of large organizations getting into your niche media, whether it’s food companies tweeting “mood” or a poorly executed Snapchat. As podcasts continue to develop and more people actually know what podcasts are, artistic and academic institutions are taking on the new medium. And, to podcast fans’ excitement, the shows these institutions are creating are thoughtful, interesting, and authentic to their mission.
Take the Poetry Foundation. The Chicago institution, in its own words, “exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.” Officially founded in 2003, it evolved out of the Modern Poetry Association, which was founded in 1941 to support the publication of the long-running and renowned literary magazine Poetry. The modern iteration could spend all its resources keeping the print magazine running, a job in itself 2019, but they took the path less traveled and invested in podcasting.
“We like to keep abreast not only of what’s happening within poetry but also within the media landscape, in general, to avoid getting too myopic,” said Cassie Mayer, director of Digital Programs, via email. The Poetry Foundation’s first digital director, Emily Warn, saw the potential of poetry podcasting and hired an audio producer with a deep knowledge of poetry. From there, their podcasting initiative was born, a lineup that now includes 11 podcasts, including sponsored projects.
They need each of those 11 podcasts; each show resonates with verse on a different level.
Poem of the Day is the daily single-serving poetry reading, The Poetry Magazine Podcast brings editors of Poetry together to break down their editorial decisions behind publishing a particular poem, and Poetry Off the Shelf (literally) gets off the shelf and examines poetry in a larger context. But one show makes particularly great use of the energy and excitement that can only be captured in a studio booth: VS. Hosted by two magnetic poets, Franny Choi and Danez Smith, the off-the-wall interview show asks poets to explain their deepest fears and anxieties and how they address them in their work.
“VS began in the late summer of 2015 as an effort to create a longer-form, conversation-based podcast that featured poets discussing everything from poems, to craft and politics, to reality TV,” said Ydalmi Noriega, Community and Foundation Relations Director and one of the creators of VS. “We wanted it to feel like eavesdropping on poets’ conversations.”
This innovative concept goes several steps beyond a basic idea of what could come from the Poetry Foundation. Their shows are allowed to be weird, fun, and exciting, paired with the gravitas that the Poetry Foundation’s name brings to each show.
They’re not the only cultural institution diving into the audiosphere in a smart, focused way. Opera houses have found their footing around the microphone, with Aria Code from WNYC, WQXR, and the Metropolitan Opera delivering an overview of the medium. There are museum podcasts, library podcasts, university podcasts, archive podcasts, government podcasts. And the good ones are exploring and re-writing what helped their institutional creators endure the test of time.
It’s particularly exciting to see these institutions investing well in a new medium because so many don’t. A company could point to the youngest person in the room and say, “Make a podcast!”, like so many did with social media and YouTube before that. But a focused strategy and hiring podcast-specific employees can set shows apart. Intent and consideration make these podcasts fun to listen to, compulsively downloadable, and enticing even for people new to that particular space.
For the Poetry Foundation, hearing poetry and discussions about poetry read out loud “is an integral part of the experience of a poem, which is why we have such an expansive lineup of audio content,” said Mayer. “Each of our podcasts captures a unique aspect of contemporary poetry, [whether it’s] conversations among poets about what’s on their mind as thoughtful humans living in the world today, conversations with contemporary poets and scholars about poetics, or discussions by and about a living poet and their work.”
VS, in particular, could be a vehicle to bring in those who don’t know much about poetry. That’s why the producers paired with Postloudness, a Chicago-based collective of independent audio shows by people of color, women, queer people, and other underrepresented hosts, to lead distribution. Although the Poetry Foundation already has name recognition, a well-chosen collaborator fluent in podcasting helps lead to success.
So what’s coming next? We can only hope for more and more impactful and thoughtful shows from the artistic establishment. The Poetry Foundation recently published A Change of World, a radio documentary narrated by Meryl Streep, about poetry and the women’s movement that broadcast on more than 30 radio stations, and they have more short-form audio in the works. Hopefully, larger institutions will take a page from the Poetry Foundation’s book and will invest brainpower and dollars into truly innovative podcasts.
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