The Line Break: our new, monthly poetry podcast

We’re quite thrilled to announce The Line Break, a new poetry podcast from The Poetry School.

The Line Break is a free monthly podcast about writing poetry, hosted by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser. For over 7 years Ryan and Colin  have been providing high-quality podcasts for the Scottish Poetry Library and the Scottish Book Trust, in addition to their own Creative Scotland funded Culture Laser programme. Now, we’re very happy to welcome them to CAMPUS for this new podcast series.

During The Line Break, Colin and Ryan will be re-visiting the archives and bringing you some of their favourite interviews and readings with poets from around the world, the ones which have stuck with us most over the years. Blended with the archive recordings will be Ryan’s exclusive new commentary, introducing fresh themes, additional ideas, and creative provocations.

Each episode, Ryan will also offer a few ‘poetry sparks’ for you to try out, opportunities to pause the podcast and work on your own poem-writing assignments. You might have ten minutes to free-write names for an imaginary paint chart, or be asked to describe what a boat made of poetry might look like; every episode will offer a multitude of fun exercises that can be easily fitted into a lunch break or the commute home.

Listeners to the podcast will also be able to subscribe to the The Line Break CAMPUS group, where Ryan will be dropping in supporting material and other poetry bits and bobs, as well as providing a free space where everyone can upload their own poems written in response to each episode.

You can listen to The Line Break on CAMPUS, on Podamatic, and also via the Scottish Poetry Library, as well as subscribing using all the usual services (iTunes, Instacast, etc.) Just look us up! The Poetry School has commissioned an initial season of ten episodes of The Line Break, and with enough success and support, we hope to bring the podcast back for another season.

We sincerely hope that The Line Break becomes your regular poetry coffee break, a little creative lacuna away from the workstation where you can pause your day-to-day thoughts and find some time to listen to and think about poetry, and write some poems of your own.

Listen in this Wednesday 3 June for the launch of the pilot episode.