Nashville Public Radio is among seven public media stations accepted into an intensive podcast training project, made possible by a $1 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Nashville’s new podcast — called Versify — is a partnership between WPLN and The Porch, Nashville’s nonprofit literary center.
The show puts a twist on storytelling: Nashville poets will travel to neighborhoods across the city, hear stories from people they’ve never met, and then capture them in verse. The episodes will share stories through the voices of residents and the completed poetry.
The concept is adapted from Poetry On Demand, a project launched by The Porch last year that received funding
through the Metro Arts THRIVE programto bring conversations and poetry to more Nashville neighborhoods and civic events.
The show will feature host Joshua Moore, a local poet and Nashville native who helped develop Poetry On Demand. WPLN’s Tony Gonzalez —
who happened to capture the project on tape at a festival last year — will be the show’s editor.
Versify will join Nashville Public Radio’s existing
fleet of podcasts:
- Movers & Thinkers, a conversation with with three interesting Nashvillians from completely different fields around a common theme
- Curious Nashville, where WPLN reporters investigate listener questions about the city
- Neighbors, a narrative storytelling show about what connects us
The stations that will take part in “Project Catapult” represent diverse production teams and topics. They include KALW in San Francisco; West Virginia Public Radio; St. Louis Public Radio; WNIN in Evansville, Ind., WYPR in Baltimore; and KUOW in Seattle. (
Read full descriptions of the podcasts here.)
The teams will meet in January at the PRX Podcast Garage in Cambridge, Mass., for the first bootcamp, and will continue a production sprint for 20 weeks before officially launching in mid-2017.
The music used in the trailer is from freemusicarchive.org and used under
this Creative Commons license.
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