So you think you’ve got a vivid poem or passionate spoken word piece that would be perfect for the first edition of our audio-journal Audacious being released next year, but not quite sure how to record it? Well, we’ve got a few tips to help you record your piece and submit it right to give it the best chance of getting in.
And to give you the best chance of getting your submission in, because we’d love a wide range to choose from, we’re extending submissions until Sunday, January 18 and before then, we’ll have a workshop with time for an open mic/submission recording session for those who can’t access recording.
- Follow the submission guidelines.
- Find a recording device.
- Find a place to record.
- Come to our recording session in January.
- 2021 XYZ Prize Winner: Megan J. Riedl’s ‘Single White Female.’ - November 8, 2021
- Melbourne Spoken Word to host spoken word festival online in 2020 - April 17, 2020
- Morgaine van Wingerden / The Waitlist - March 19, 2020
The submission guidelines can be found on our Submittable Page here. Please read them carefully and submit your piece via the form. Please do not email us your poems. Please include a bio with your piece, but do not include a cover letter or a note in that box. We just need your bio. Also it’s really important that we get your recording in the highest quality possible which is why we only accept WAVE (.wav) files to produce our CD and upload the album to Bandcamp. Please don’t make a .mp3 and convert to a .wav file. Read on to see how to record your poem.
like this(pictured) might be ideal for someone on a budget. You can also find microphones that plug into your smartphone to increase your quality of recording. You may also just record your poem via your computer or smartphone with the inbuilt microphone but it might not be as high quality, and it might be hard for us to hear it properly. When recording on your computer, you can download a free program like
Audacity to record your poem onto and save it as a .wav file.
For those looking to do more professional recordings, say if you wanted to produce a spoken word album yourself, you can buy audio recording interfaces for $100-200 and a microphone and cable for another $50-100 and record that way.
It is really important that the recording is as clean as possible so find a quiet place to record, with no background noise whatsoever. Some microphones will pick up sounds from the next room, or from outside. Best to stay away from windows and ask anyone in your house to be silent for the couple of minutes you’re recording. And it’s best to listen to your recording over after you record it, and then re-record if you stumble a bit on a line or hear someone cough in the next room, and stuff like that.
We’re going to host a casual workshop in January at Under the Hammer, to help people get some writing done, with a few exercises and theatre workshops and a chance to share and ask questions about writing. In that time, we’ll allocate a section so people can record their poems and submit them. It’s preferable you bring a poem already and don’t just submit the thing you wrote that day. Fill out our poll below to let us know the best day to host it on.
Loading ...If you’ve got any questions, leave them below and we can help you out.
