How to start a poetry podcast

Poetry podcasts can be very short: one poem and a few minutes of reflection. Five to ten minutes is a natural length, and a daily or weekly poem is a habit listeners can keep.

Common formats: reading your own work, a poem a day, featuring a guest poet reading and discussing their work, close readings of classic poems, or themed episodes around a season or subject.

Your own poems are yours to read. Contemporary poems by other poets are protected by copyright, so reading them in full on a podcast needs permission from the poet or publisher. Many poets will say yes if you ask and credit them.

Classic poetry in the public domain is free to read. In the US, poems published before 1929 are public domain, which includes a huge range of great work. The simplest legal route for featuring living poets is to invite them to read their own work as guests.

Poetry on the page uses line breaks and white space. Poetry on air uses pauses, breath and pace. Read slower than feels natural, and let the silence at the end of a line do its work.

Practise each poem aloud several times before recording. Mark where you will breathe. See how to improve your speaking voice for warm-up habits.

Do not run automatic silence removal on poetry. The pauses are part of the poem. Remove only false starts and outside noise, and leave every deliberate pause in place.

Editing by transcript lets you cut a fluffed line while leaving the timing of the rest untouched. Light background music can help between poems, but keep it out from under the reading itself.

A repeatable structure makes a poetry podcast easy to produce and easy to listen to:

1. A one-line introduction to the poem and poet
2. The poem, read once, slowly
3. A short reflection: an image, a line or a turn that matters
4. The poem read a second time, so the listener hears it with new ears

Reading the poem twice is a small idea that makes a big difference. Listeners often say the second reading is where the poem lands.

A single poem is the perfect length for a social clip. Post the reading with the text on screen, credit the poet, and link back to the episode.