Melodically Challenged
"where yesterday's poetry comes alive and today's poetry rocks"
Our weekly radio show plays the best in contemporary poetry, traditional, and avant-garde poetry and alternative music revolving around a chosen theme. Themes may be topical, formal, regional, by movement or period, or by poet. Recent show themes have included aging, beauty, sonnets, odes, and Southern poets, to name a few. We also participate in and incorporate into the show local and national literary events, such as National Poetry Month, the AJC Decatur Book Festival, and National Day on Writing, whenever possible.
My main job for melodically challenged is writing and voicing shows. But, since our show is entirely created, produced, and promoted by just a handful of volunteers who have full-time jobs and/or are full-time students, we all pitch in when and where we can. Besides writing shows, I help with promotions and advertising in a variety of capacities, from making phone calls to radio stations to manning our table at events to responding to social media comments to keeping the website up-to-date.
Writing a show begins with finding a theme. Once I have the idea, I find about 45 minutes of poems from our audio library or the organizations that we have agreements with, like The Academy of American Poets and From the Fishouse. Then I find songs to compliment the poems. Once I have the audio files gathered, I determine how I want to organize them and write the accompanying script. The last step is to record the backtracks and script. After that the show goes into production, and it's out of my hands!
We are sponsored in part by the GSU Department of English, and we're broadcast on Georgia State's student-run WRAS every Sunday from 5-7 Eastern (an hour for the syndicated show plus an hour-long live show), as well as in syndication on nine stations in five states. If your station is interested in airing melodically challenged, shows are available for download through Public Radio Exchange. Please visit melodically challenged online or find us on Facebook or Twitter to learn more.