Thread: Pilot Podcast
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Unread 02-23-2010, 01:01 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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Default Pilot Podcast

Pilot Podcast, the Eratosphere

I have recently done recordings for Poetry Magazine’s Podcast and for Minnesota Public Radio’s Soundzine; and my long-time MPR producer, Dan Gunderson, Station Chief for KCCM in Moorhead Minnesota, told me I should be producing a podcast, though I didn’t even know what that was. Well, I do now, and the more I looked into it and thought about it, the more excited I became. Rather than start from scratch with no audience, I sought out Alex Pepple, impressario of the Eratosphere. I’m pleased to say Alex was as enthusiastic as am I.

In his seminal 1991 essay “Can Poetry Matter?” Dana Gioia’s sixth, final, cardinal point in his program for poets to reclaim audience is for us to exploit radio, which he characterizes as the ideal medium for our art. When Dana wrote the essay, radio hadn’t yet made it to the internet, and its arrival in digital form there vastly increases our opportunities. The verses workshopped here tell me that most of us write for the ear, not for the page. Increasingly, the zines are giving us the opportunity to record voice to accompany individual submissions. This will be a further step in that direction. Alex and I will be seeking programs of roughly half an hour in length. Alex is creating a new forum, The Distinguished Performance Board, and we hope to rival the very high standards set at Distinguished Guest over the past eight years. A new hurdle to be overcome is that we expect recordings to be professionally done. A cell phone call to Alex’ answering machine is not going to suffice. I have acquired a Pro Tools Vocal Studio, an M Audio Mic, and enlisted the aid of a young friend, Jack Stenerson, who is an undergraduate audio engineer at Dave Mason’s former college, Minnesota State University at Moorhead, just across the river. Sphereans, meet Jack, who will be the engineer for our series.

Alex and I shall jointly share editorial responsibility for the series, which is a forum open to everyone who can offer really worthy material. We will have the technical ability to combine readings and interviews, to splice your answers from your recordings to questions from me or another interviewer. I have many projects in mind already, some based on previous Distinguished Guest events, such as our Younger Poets Forum, our Women Poets Forum. I would like to produce a couple of shows showcasing that remarkable band of poets in Massachusetts, the Powows. I am learning this game by submitting to a very long distance reading/interview with Rob Godfrey’s Local Radio France. It is a reading of my poems on alcoholism and a frank and painful interview on my struggles with my disease. I shall have Rob post his reflections on the production and a link to it when we’re done. And Jack is splicing an interview KCCM’s Dan Gunderson did on Beowulf with Alan and me to twenty minutes of excerpts from the studio recording Longman commissioned me to do when the college text was launched. How about a program consisting of twelve sonnets and the comments of our Bake-off judge? I think we can have a lot of fun with this, get to know one another better, and leave an archive worthy of the Sphere.

Alex and I shall be charting our course here with your feedback in mind. We are keenly interested not just in your reaction to this first experiment but to the whole concept of an Eratosphere Podcast.

Jack is coming over to convert his wav file to mp3, which all of you can read, and I'll edit in the link to the performance later today. yr Lariat.

Last edited by Alex Pepple; 02-25-2010 at 12:40 AM. Reason: Added the podcast
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