About The Concise Verse
Some poems demand an hour. Others need only a moment — and leave you changed.
The Concise Verse is a weekly podcast dedicated to short-form poetry: brief, beautiful works that reward a single sitting. Each episode features one carefully chosen poem, read aloud without commentary, allowing the words to speak for themselves.
The archive spans centuries and voices — from Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson to Dorothy Parker — united by a single principle: brevity. Every poem is compact in form but vast in feeling.
Each episode is accompanied by an original illustration and a companion blog post exploring the poem's style, meaning, and lasting resonance. The two are designed to work together — listen first, then read, or read first and then listen.
This project began as a personal journey — to deepen my appreciation of poetry, to discover voices I'd never encountered, and to share that discovery with others. What started as an experiment has grown into an archive I'm genuinely proud of.
New episodes arrive every Sunday.
The Concise Verse is created and hosted by John Healey.
Listen now, subscribe in your favorite player, and allow us to share a brief moment of true beauty with you.
