I think I get it, but why?
Hearing a poem helps. If you’re confused, it can provide a handrail. If you think you’ve got it figured out, hearing can often give an extra angle. For some, poetry is foreign. Hearing can be a landing strip, an easier interface. Recorded poems, if free, can be easily shared online. Teachers can point to them in their curriculum, desperate students can find their Virgil at 2am, enthusiasts can email them to the uninitiated, and the curious can peek in without much effort. Interesting, but it seems ambitious.
Fill in some details.
First, we’re not starting entirely from scratch. A number of poets and archives are granting existing recordings to the project. This simply means they’re giving us – the i am large project (IALP) – non-commercial rights to the recordings. We handle all the technical stuff, and the recorded poems become available for free, on the web, to anyone at no cost. So we already have a bunch of good recordings.
Second, for new recordings, we’re sending the studio directly to the readers. We will FEDEX a very high-quality recording device. It is the size of a paperback book and completely poet-proof. Readers will find a quiet place and record 50 or so poems, and then ship the device back to us (we’ll include the return box, postage, throat lozenges, etc.) After we receive it, the recordings will be available online in a matter of days.
Third, we’ve got some great online partner sites helping us share and distribute these recordings. By placing these recordings under the non-commercial license some of the most visited sites such as the Amazon, Wikipedia, Download.com, the Internet Archive will help us get the word out to the very general public. Other poetry sites, libraries, schools will also have full access to all the recordings and the index at no charge.
Ok, my shoe is in. How can I help?
If we’re contacting you to be a reader, then raise your hand and say ‘yes’. Accept the post, we’ll mutually agree on the poems you’ll read, and you’ll receive a recording kit in the mail.
If we’re contacting you to grant us rights to your existing recordings, please give us the nod. We’ve done a ton of research and what you have is valuable to the world. We wouldn’t waste your time if it wasn’t. With your help 100x the people will discover and enjoy your recording.
If we’re contacting you to grant us rights to record some of your poems, please consider working with us to get it done. Sometimes this takes a call or two to your publisher but it’s worth it on many levels.
If you want to give us money, well that’s very generous of you, but at this stage we’ve got that part covered and volunteers are eagerly doing most of the heavy lifting.
Contact us at iamlarge@gmail.com
