TeleBlog book editor Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a poet, so maybe she’ll appreciate what follows–and ideally blog about it in time.
Poems for the iPod and presumably other machines will soon be on sale at 50 pence, 93 cents, according to the BookBlog. The forthcoming site at ipoems.org.uk will go public in October with more than 1,000 MP3s.
British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has told The Telegraph: “This is an area with huge potential. If we can have symphonies and religious sermons to listen to on our iPods, why not poems?”
A few more details from the Telegram:
Verse by poets such as John Hegley, Jean ”Binta” Breeze and Benjamin Zephaniah will be available through a service inspired by the Apple phenomenon iTunes. Each poem will be spoken by the writer…
The site, among the first of its kind in Britain, will also offer film downloads to illustrate the poems….
Poems spoken by their writers can already be heard on some internet sites and on the not-for-profit website The Poetry Archive, which was set up by Prof Motion last November, has attracted 250,000 visitors. But the files on The Poetry Archive cannot be bought and downloaded on to an iPod.
Ian McMillan, a Yorkshire poet who is recording his first iPoem for the site, said volumes of verse would soon be produced in Mp3 files alongside traditional book binding. He said: “This is the way forward. The spoken poems will offer a different and deeper interpretation, and take us right back to the oral tradition that poetry is rooted in. Even the cheapest books are still a few quid, but you can have a poem for 50p.”
So, Sadi, what are the market prospects for this project? The Book Standard‘s headline is, “Poetry poised to be ignored on iPods, too.” Let’s hope that reality vindicates the optimists.
