Irish Literature you can listen to

After years producing radio programmes about lhe arts in Ireland and documentaries about Irish culture. My business partner and I could not understand why so many of the talented people we met were not doing better, particularly when it came to Irish literature. I have always grown up in the belief that the world loved Irish literature and that Irish writers were the best there is. I still believe that but why were so many of the writers we met holding down other jobs to keep the wolf from the door ?. All of them have a desire to write and an incredible skill and passion for writing but few of them could say it was their full time occupation. I honestly struggled with the notion that this highly talented and immensley popular group of people were not being afforded an opportunity to devote their lives to their chosen profession.

Even in the boom years of The Celtic Tiger when many of our writers were doing well, few if any could say that their full time job was that of a scribe, although to be fair The Irish Government during this stage had invested generously in the arts. Now that the world economy has fallen into decline, so too has expenditure on the arts but the quality of writing has not. So my partner and I, who got to meet so many Irish writers over a ten year period of recording an arts show for local radio and seeing the growing popularity of podcasts set to try to make an effort to bring the works of Irish writers to the world wide web.

In March 2009 we registered the domain name www.podcasts.ie (dot ie being the Irish version of dot com) and began to look at how best to bring Irish literature to a bigger audience. By August it became clear that if we wanted to make a lot of sound files available to a lot of people we would need our own server and we would have to design the site ourselves. By November it was my partner who had designed the site and together we tested it out using material from writers Jack Harte, Terry Mc Donagh and Ger Reidy who supported the idea fully from the moment we approached them. The most important issue for us was sound quality while not having to wait an age for downloads, followed by ease of use, we really wanted new surfers to find their way around the site from day one. All went well and after Christmas 2009 we were ready to begin podcasting in earnest.

We would have several categories of writers, poetry, prose and of course music, another area in which Ireland has a terrific talent pool. The support from writers has been unbelievable, all those we approached agreed to be interviewed and to read or perform their work and to make them available as free downloads. We also thought it might be nice to delve into our radio archives and have been regularly producing 3 different shows about heritage and culture as well as including podcasts about unique events and some Irish mythical stories. With little or no publicity the site has been viewed in over 30 countries with close on 200,000 hits in its first 4 months. Our aim is to bring as many Irish writers as we can to the site and for the surfing public to come and sample their work and hopefully nurture or continue to develop a love of Irish poetry prose and music.

From working with writers of literature over the years, in my head I can always hear them read to me whenever I pick up their books afterwards and with songwriters, I love the stories behind the songs and at www.podcasts.ie we hope you will have the same experience.