The number of online destinations offering free downloadable audio and video files of poet/author readings, interviews, workshops etc. is growing daily. The links on this page will lead you through the front (and a few back) doors of the main online treasure houses where large numbers of such files can be found. Some are recordings of readings or classes given at Universities or bookstores, some are podcasts that include interviews, readings, etc. Some of the largest sites can be a bit tricky to navigate, in which case several links will be offered on this page, leading through as many “back doors” as we can locate, to make sure you don’t miss anything great. Some individual links to lone files scattered across the web will appear here as well, but with the big sites, we’ll just help you get there and trust you to do your own exploring. You will be amazed at the depth, breadth, variety and extraordinary quality of what is available out there, and all of it absolutely free!
One secret to downloading MP3 files (rather than having them simply open up in Windows Media Player and start playing right there on your PC) is to do this:
1. Connect your MP3 player to you PCs USB port.
2. Instead of left clicking the link, as you would do to simply follow it, right click it instead.
3. Click “save target as”
4. Direct the file to save directly to your MP3 player.
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PennSound – This is the “biggie.” There are literally hundreds of hours of free recordings buried here, brought to you by the University of Pennsylvania. Kelly’s Writer’s House is a part of Penn State, and many of the recordings are of visiting KWH fellows. There are also podcast, special programs, everything you could possibly imagine and then some. The focus is primarily on poets and authors who would be classified as “Literary,” but many genre writers, such as horror author Peter Straub, are represented here as well. Visit this site over and over again. There is enough here to keep you busy for a long time, and new stuff is added daily. The link above leads to the PennSound “front door,” where you can always see the newest additions to the site. Some “back doors” well worth exploring include:
PennSound Authors – A complete list of individual authors with recordings on the site. There were about 300 or so when I composed this paragraph, with more being added all the time. These are all “big names,” including folks like Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein, Robert Creely, Samuel R. Delaney, Allen Ginsburg, Albert Goldbarth, Donald Hall, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, Jerome Rothenberg, Peter Straub, James Tate, William Carlos Williams, and many many many more.
PennSound Series – A “back door” leading to numerous others, all filled with treasure. This page offers links to all of the PennSound podcasts, reading series etc., none of which are reflected in the “authors” list above. “Series” (each with its own unique audio archive) include: Close Listening, Cross-Cultural Poetics (radio interview show with host Leonard Schwartz), Ceptuetics Radio (radio interview show with host Kareem Estefan), Ear Inn, NYC (Segue Series), The Emergency Reading Series, Holloway Series in Poetry at Berkeley, Susan Howe/ WBAI-Pacifica Radio, In the American Tree, Kelly Writers House Arts Cafe Readings, LA-Lit (hosted by Mathew Timmons and Stephanie Rioux), The Left Hand Reading Series (Boulder, Colorado), The Line Reading Series, LINEbreak, LIVE at the Writers House, Mills College, miPOradio, Narrow House, Offpage, PhillyTalks, POG Sound, Radio Poetique (produced by Susan Brennan), RadioRadio (produced by Martin Spinelli), Radio Reading Project (Bernstein, Mac Low, Weiner, Creeley, Vicuna, Drucker, Andrews, Perednick, Howe, Rothenberg, Carrera), Rattapallax, Segue at The Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, Segue at Double Happiness, NYC, Studio 111, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Wednesdays @ 4Plus, WKCR
PennSound Anthologies, Collections and Group Readings – Just what the name implies. Content not duplicated under other categories above. Includes: American Poetry: The Next Generation, Audioei / OEI #26, Carnivocal, Chax NYC Reading, Hart Crane Celebration, Crayon #3 Reading, Dada Sounds, Deformance (PennSouond feature), Exact Change Yearbook, ed. Peter Gizzi, Factorial Archive of Japanese Poetry, Finding the Words (on Marianne Moore), Flarf Poetry Festival at the Kelly Writers House, 2007, Four Horsemen: tracks from Canadada & Live From the West, Frequency Audio Journal: First Issue, Kenning CD – Part 1: 20 poets / Part 2: Scalapino’s Way, LEGEND reading by Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma & Ron Silliman, 1981, Live at the Ear
Louis Zukofsky Centennial Conference (excerpts), MLA Offsite Readings, 2004 & 2006, MLA Offsite Reading, 2007, MLA Offsite Reading, 2008, Nine Contemporary Poets Read Themselves Through Modernism, Night of New Translations
The Shape of Disclosure: George Oppen Centennial Symposium organized by Poets House, NYC, A Celebration of George Oppen’s 100th Birthday at the Kelly Writers House, Penn Grad Students on LIVE at the Writers House, PennSound Classics
The Philly Sound: New Poetry Weekend, Poems for the Millennium, Poetry & Empire: Post-Invasion Poetics, Poetry, Politics, Proximity, Queering Language, Race and Poetry, 2008, Six Fillious Reading at the Ear Inn, 1979, Radical Jewish Poetry/Secular Jewish Practice, A 40th Anniversary Celebration of Technicians of the Sacred at the Bowery Poetry Club, 2008 , Will Alexander Benefits Readings in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, The World Record (1981): Recordings from The St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1969-1980.
The PennSound Singles – Dozens of readings by individual poets and authors, ranging in length from one minute to over one hour.
The PennSound Video – About a dozen fascinating free videos, including “Poets Against the War,” Robert Ashley’s “Music with Roots in the Aether” (Opera for Television series), and a post-reading discussion with Jerome Rothenberg from the Kelley Writers House.
Poem Talk – a podcast series sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, the Kelly Writers House and PennSound. Recent podcasts include: Williams’s “Between Walls”, Adrienne Rich, “Wait”, George Oppen, “Ballad”, Ginsberg sings Blake, Ted Berrigan’s “3 Pages”, a Jaap Blonk sound poem, Rothenberg’s paradise, Armantrout’s “The Way”, Ashbery at a crossroads, one of Stein’s portraits, Erica Hunt’s “voice of no”, Ezra Pound’s America and Kathleen Fraser’s highway.
LINEbreak – Winner of the 1997 CASE Award for Radio Programming, LINEbreak is a series of half-hour length programs with some of the smartest and most innovative writers and artists at work today. LINEbreak showcases a broad range of authors from around the country and around the world, from famous novelists and screenwriters whose work is regularly reviewed in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and The New York Review of Books, to revolutionary and avant-garde poets, performance artists and video artists whose work is often neglected by the mainstream media. The series is hosted and co-produced by poet and professor Charles Bernstein, and is produced and directed by Martin Spinelli.
Kelly’s Writer’s House – Tons of stuff here. Lots of video.
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Poets on Poets – Poets on Poets is an audio archive of Romantic-period poems selected and read by practicing poets from around the world. These poets have chosen poems they particularly admire, and some have provided audio commentary on how the poem has influenced their work.
The Cortland Review – An Online Literary Magazine in RealAudio.
The Academy of American Poets – Everything poetry, including lots of audio poems by the best and the brightest.
An Audible Anthology – Poems from The Atlantic Monthly read aloud.
The Missouri Review Podcast Series – Discovering the best in fiction, poetry and essays.
Poetry Hi-Fi – Poetry from left of the dial…
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2008 National Book Festival Podcasts – The first of several links from the remarkable collection of the Library of Congress. Who knew our own government could be so cool? In these 2008 podcasts, listen to interviews with over a dozen authors, including Louis Bayard, Jan Bret, Geraldine Brooks, Marisa de la Santos, Walter Isaacson, Cokie Roberts, Kay Ryan (the 2009 US Poet Laureate), R. L. Stine, and many more.
2007 National Book Festival Podcasts – Author interviews from the 2007 event, including Terry Pratchett, Charles Simic, Rosemary Wells, Victoria Rowell, Ken Burns, David Baldacci and many more.
The National Book Festival Podcast Archive – All 400+ National Book Festival podcasts in the LOC collection. Authors include Judith Viorst, Scott Turow, Bob Woodward, Sharyn McCrumb, Brad Meltzer, Spider and Jeanne Robinson, E.L. Doctorow, Sue Monk Kidd, Diana Gabaldon, Tom Wolfe, George R.R. Martin, A.E. Stallings, Giada De Laurentiis, Alice Fulton, Robert L. Carter, David McCullough, Ben Bova, Barbara Bradford, Clive Cussler, Joyce Carol Oates… and literally hundreds more.
Favorite Poem Project – A video archive of average Americans reading and discussing their favorite poems. A project of previous US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. This is really great material, not to be missed!
The Center for the Book Webcasts – Dozens of programs in RealPlayer format, which will play on just about any PC, and which can usually be converted to MP3 format using whatever software came with your MP3 device. Authors/Poets include Mark Stein, Robert Haas, Bill McKibben, Stephen King (with Tabitha), David Robbins, Sara Paretsky, Dana Stabenow, Carolyn Hart, Herman Wouk, Robert Pinsky, Harold Bloom and many more.
LOC Poetry & Literature Webcasts – Nearly 600 individual webcasts, including: Poetry at Noon: The Air Poets, Celebrating Kentucky Poets, Publishing in the 21st Century, 2007-08 Americas Awards, Poetry as Propaganda During WWI, Octavio Paz Symposium, Simic on the Art of Translation, Robert Hass Moderates River of Words Ceremony, Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, Poetry of Mark Strand and Charles Wright, Poetry by James Tate and Jorie Graham, MacDowell Colony Poets, Shakespeare’s Genealogies, Nuts and Bolts of Historical Fiction, David Ignatius: Book Fest 07, Harry Turtledove: Book Fest 07, Joyce Carol Oates: Book Fest 07, Poetry of Robert Bly and Coleman Barks, Ralph Ellison, Celebrating Rumi, Donald Hall: Book Fest 06… This is literally a bottomless pit of inspiration. Dive in!
LOC Poetry Webcasts – If you want to sort the webcasts from the previous listing by poetry only, this is the link you want.
The Poet and the Poem – A fabulous series of insightful interviews, interspersed by readings, with poets of both great and minor acclaim. Host Grace Cavalieri has one of those voices that takes a little getting used to, but stick it out until you do – Ms. Cavalieri is a remarkably educated and intelligent interviewer. She questions from a base of strong knowledge of the individual poets and their work, and asks great questions that lead to sometimes quite profound responses. I love this series! NOTE: There are two pages of interviews, A-M and N-Z. Be sure you visit both pages when you visit.
Poetry Vision Webcasts – A series of long video documentaries focusing on 10 poetic “greats” (so far): Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Glück, Sam Hamill, Michael Harper, Etheridge Knight, Stanley Kunitz, Denise Levertov and Robert Penn Warren.
Lit-Cast – An audio journal of literature, in MP3 format. Includes fiction, essays and poetry. Be sure to check out the selections by my good friend and favorite poet, David Clewell, of St, Louis, Webster University fame. His pieces here include The Collector, Desperate Measures, Vegetarian Physics and A Brief History of the Moon in 20th Century Song and Then Some. Lots of other great stuff here, too.
Librivox - Librivox volunteers (and you can become one, if you like) record public domain books (generally books published prior to 1923) and post them as free MP3 files for your listening pleasure. This is a terrific resource! The individual recording are rarely of the quality to be found in the listings above, and it can be a bit unnerving to have each chapter in a book read by different people, with very different voices, but nowhere else on the Internet are so many fabulous works available for free in MP3 format. Pretty much every classic of literature you can think of is either here or in the works. Anton Chekhov, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound… and on and on and on. Everyone who lives in a small town (like Lamar…) should download Sherwood Anderson’s Great American Novel Winesburg, Ohio. The Librivox recording is a bit uneven, but wow – what a fabulous novel! Don’t miss it!
Podiobooks.com – Free serialized audiobooks, delivered on your schedule.
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Naropa Audio Archive – An ever-growing audio collection (826 individual files at the time of this posting) of classes, lectures and readings across a wide spectrum of poetics-related topics, recorded at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and the memory of Jack Kerouac, Beat poetry and its legacy exert a heavy (but not exclusive) influence on the direction of “Naropa Poetics,” so if that is your area of interest, you’ll be in heaven on this site. If not, it is still worth digging through this massive audio collection for surprise titles, like this great 1983 reading by Gary Snider.
The Internet Archive Audio Collection – This collection is far too vast to catalog here, so just click the link and begin your exploration! At the time of this posting, there were 329,844 items in the IA collection, all searchable, and all free. The key here is to start with the “search” box near the top of the screen. Put in any key word you think might lead to you something interesting, make sure the “media type” shows “audio,” then click “go.” Some good key words to try are “writing,” “novel,” “short stories,” “poetry,” literature,” “writing class,” the names of your favorite individual poets or authors, etc. You will be amazed what is available!
A Pod of Poets is a series of eleven, 40-minute podcasts of Australian poetry, read by the authors. You’ll also find transcripts, photographs, interviews, and more. The poets are: Robert Adamson, Les Murray, Joanne Burns, John Kinsella, Josephine Rowe, Craig Billingham, L.K. Holt, Aidan Coleman, Jayne Fenton Keane, Martin Harrison, Sam Wagan Watson, Kathryn Lomer, Esther Ottaway, John Clarke and Jordie Albiston.
BBC Poetry Out Loud – A collection of poets performing their own work in Real Audio format, including Bogland by Seamus Heaney, After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W.H.Auden, Love in the Lab by Jo Shapcott, Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah, On the Booze by John Hegley, The Cats’ Protection League by Roger McGough, Diary of a Church Mouse by Sir John Betjeman, You and Me and P.B. Shelley by Ogden Nash, Homecoming: Anse La Raye by Derek Walcott, A March Calf by Ted Hughes, The Mitchells by Les Murray, Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, Miss World by Benjamin Zephaniah, The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Tennyson, Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith, You May Turn Over and Begin by Simon Armitage, Men and Their Boring Arguments…by Wendy Cope, Into My Mirror Has Walked by Brian Patten, The Most Unforgettable Character…by Roger McGough, and Bessie Smith in Yorkshire by Adrian Mitchell.
The Book of Voices is e-poets’ new media library of poetry in spoken word, performance, and text. It’s a portal into aural poetry culture gathered from some of the more interesting voices of our day, with readings from the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The Artists catalog is a comprehensive list of all artists who have streaming media archived on e-poets.net. Over 50 artists are listed alphabetically by surname, and most artists have multiple recordings. “Special chapters” provides in-depth features on a given artist or a group of artists, as portraits into their lives. Chapters contain multiple samples of streaming media to audition, and typically include the original texts of the poetry. “Catalogs by culture” is a recent and evolving addition to the Book of Voices, where work is indexed by shared culture. Listen and investigate the commonalities and diversities of spoken word among artists sharing heritage, geography, gender, or philosophy.
The Videotheque is e-poets’ collection of poetry as motion pictures: poems that move, speak, and paint images in time. The online collection is sorted into these categories: “Composed videos” – Poetry videos that are directed expressly around, with, or from a given poem, and include more than the poet performing it, are in our composed video collection. “Documentation videos” – These are clips that capture a poet in performance, and document the poet as they’re seen before an audience or simply before a camera. “Artists catalog” – You may also sift through the videos artist-by-artist.
Dia Readings In Contemporary Poetry - From the fall of 1987 through the Spring of 2003, over one hundred poets read in Dia’s Readings in Contemporary Poetry series, coordinated by Brighde Mullins. These readings included historic literary events, such as James Schuyler’s first public reading.
From The Fishhouse – An Audio Archive of Emerging Poets – Founded in 2004 by Matt O’Donnell and Camille Dungy, From the Fishouse promotes the oral tradition of poetry. Their free online audio archive showcases emerging poets (defined for this purpose as poets with fewer than two published books of poetry at the time of submission) reading their own poems, as well as answering questions about poetry and the writing process. Their mission is to provide up-and-coming poets an outlet to a wider audience, to provide the public with greater access to authors reading their own work, and to provide an educational resource to students and teachers of contemporary poetry.
Painted Bride Quarterly Podcasts - PBQ Poetry Series features MP3 readings from Ian Micir, Amy Weaver, Paul Siegell, Kathleen Volk Miller, Jim Corey, Janet Mason, Kate Ferrencz, Jeffrey McDaniel, Daisy Fried, Natalie Walker, Scott Churchman, Hutch, Don Riggs, Chris McSween, Cecily Kellogg, Charlie O’Hay, Andrew Keller, Shafer Hall, Jailbird Thunderheart, Lois Marie Harrod, Juditha Dowd
Discover the World of “Poetry Slam” – If you are not familiar with the concept of the “poetry slam,” this 15 minute mini-documentary from Google Video is a great introduction:
Just click “play!”
Also, here is an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on the art form:
“Poetry slams can feature a broad range of voices, styles, cultural traditions, and approaches to writing and performance. Some poets are closely associated with the vocal delivery style found in hip-hop music and draw heavily on the tradition of dub poetry, a rhythmic and politicized genre belonging to black and particularly West Indian culture. Others employ an unrhyming narrative formula. Some use traditional theatric devices including shifting voices and tones, while others may recite an entire poem in ironic monotone. Some poets use nothing but their words to deliver a poem, while others stretch the boundaries of the format, tap-dancing or beatboxing or using highly-choreographed movements…”
If you find other quality links to audio/video poetry on the web, please email me at ArtsCouncilofBartonCounty@Yahoo.com with the URL, so I can add it to this list. Thank you!
