February is the shortest month, which should fit well with our apparently shortening attention spans. January sat there like Edgar Allan Poe’s raven, refusing to budge – but February promises speed. Blink and it’s past, flying by in a cloud of pancake flour, blown on by Cupid’s wings. Brevity brings poetry to mind: a short form for a short month. And with more people wanting their dopamine fix to come quicker, now is the time for publishers to fill that space with poetry podcasts and apps.

In 2023, a study from King’s College London found that 49% of participants felt their attention spans are shorter than they used to be. Most people believed that the average attention span is just eight seconds long, less than that of a goldfish. Long-term studies on the actual length of attention spans don’t yet exist, but we do know our media-rich lives interfere with concentration. At the same time, a high percentage of people – classified as "positive multi-screeners" by the report, and forming 42% of the population – are highly engaged users who see technological benefits in our age of hyper-fixated technology. This is great news for poetry.

Moreover, as reports in recent years from Stanford and Harvard have proven, people retain information better in shorter bursts. The brain responds more positively to active learning than traditional, lecture-based approaches. Short bursts of learning increase the ability to remember what you are supposed to be taking in. Are you following what I’m saying? Just checking.

This is where poetry – which often comes in short form – becomes uncannily suited to today’s hectic schedules. Not only does the art form lend itself to small regular doses, it also offers respite from the relentless pace of data saturation. Picture poetry as an island you can access when digital waves are crashing on every side. With time spent on emails, texts, screens and laptops taking up the majority of our waking hours, poetry is a place you can go to for disco pineapple mojito moons (and other wild metaphors).

This doesn’t mean that a poem has to turn up bow-tied in analogue tape. Digital-ready poems can be most effective because they are most readily accessible – a sideswipe away when waiting for the bus, a voice in the ear when walking. The analogy might be formed with the anti-hangover cure people rave about: drink a glass of water between stronger drinks and your head will thank you later. So, who’s leading the way in the world of podcasts and apps and what can publishers learn?

Picture poetry as an island you can access when digital waves are crashing on every side

Poetry Unbound is a podcast conceived and hosted by Pádraig Ó Tuama, offering the following hits against modern life: it is short, unhurried and each episode is focused on a single poem. Poems are read once at the beginning of each episode and once at the end, offering a chance to go deep into a single piece of language art. You come away from Poetry Unbound knowing that whatever else happens in your day you’ll end it having a poem in long-term memory that wasn’t there before. As one person reviewing the podcast says: "I’m breathing again. My middle is opened. I’m breathing". 

The National Poetry Library’s e-loans collection gives you complete control over how much poetry you want, and whether you prefer this as a reading or listening experience. Free to join – simply sign-up online at nationalpoetrylibrary.org.uk – you will then be given access to a digital library you can access on your device of choice, where the latest collections of poetry, as well as the classics that never grow old, are available to dip into. Audiobooks are read by celebrities and by the poets themselves, creating a special intimacy that can be unforgettable – even while filling a basket in Tesco. 

It’s time for more publishers to enter the fold, because in this busy world of endless apps, poetry needs its own. The Poetry Foundation app is fun, and filled with great work, but is now more than a decade old. Penguin’s Poems by Heart was perfect for young students to memorise poetry but is no longer available: "This page is being kept here purely as a historical artefact," the website states, as if the app is an excavated Roman urn. Publishers should look to fill this space, to create their own apps with poems by the poets they publish themselves, as a tool for developing a new readership for their work. One idea is to pair poems from contemporary poets with out-of-copyright classics, creating sparks between old and new. That way, readers come away enjoying something from the history of poetry, as well as discovering a new poet. 

The knock-on effect of this? Book sales. Padraig’s latest Poetry Unbound anthology is everywhere and set to sell as well as previous editions in the series, with 50 Poems to Open Up Your World having more than 1,500 ratings on goodreads.com. The subtitle for the latest book, Poems on Being with Each Other, tells publishers something key. There are more ways than ever to be with a poem and filling the breaks between big data saturation is the holy grail for today’s poetry publishing world.