Versecraft

Unique among its podcastical peers, Versecraft is a high quality dive into the guts of poem after poem. The host—the man with the mellow pipes—is a counterrevolutionary and polymath. This provides him with tools for thinking that most poets of his age lack, given the majority are benighted, prosodically ignorant, and proud of the desire to destroy what they refuse to understand. Listen to this podcast for deep dives into poets you thought you knew, as well as to encounter unfamiliar names. This podcast should be on the syllabus for any new poet.

Where has Versecraft been all my life? It’s a bit late, at eighty years old, to find one’s home. Not complaining, but I could have used it at thirty.

Elijah takes us through his uniquely comprehensive intelligence to understand a single poem. It’s a great journey. He’s the course you wish you took in college.

While the preface indicates that this is a podcast for poetic dissection, there is much more on offer. Versecraft topics run the gambit from homosexuality to feminism to suicide to lust, history, music, abortion, rap, love, and on, and on.. the ground covered is broad and can be bold. It doesn’t just poke at the heart of what humans can really do with language, but what we choose to communicate and how. It presents a poetry which you can interpret, rather than intuit alone. In a world that is flush with feelings of meaninglessness and nihilism Versecraft offers a refreshingly purposeful and serious take on the human experience, as viewed through a particular artistic window. Not to say some of the content isn’t controversial- Elijah definitely rubs the established poetry community the wrong way at times. However, though some may bristle at the delivery, as a podcast Versecraft has ample entertainment and educational value to go along with that bold, refreshing perspective. 5/5.