George the poet originally started as a spoken word artist and rapper: “I always used the ability the rhyme to talk about the world”. At the age of 19, he transitioned from music into poetry after starting university. Today, he produces a podcast testing the boundaries of audio. Music, poetry and well researched content mix together to create an audio experience that transports the listener into a different world. He has found a “hybrid way to do podcasts”.
He and his team work up to ten months on one episode, writing and recording not only the poetry, but also a multi-layered soundtrack. “The structure is the real challenge”, George explains: “how do you transition between ideas?”. The long preparation is audible in the result, which George wants to be like “the experience of watching a beautiful film purely in your mind”. No wonder there are no competitors doing the same thing he does: “there’s probably too much work in it”.
What does George the poet want to do? “The task has evolved over time”, he explains.
At the beginning, he wanted to be a megaphone for what he learned at university: he wanted to enable people who were not able to attend to learn the same things he did. His ambitions, however, became more and more political. With his art, he tries to provide a new form of platform for political discussion: “we need a way to talk about this stuff that isn’t awkward, that isn’t antagonistic. And podcasting is a canvas [for that]”.
George the poet shows us what can be possible in podcasts when we treat it more like art: “podcasting [can] be as elastic as animation”
