How to Submit Poems to All India Radio and What It Pays
Quick answer: How to submit poems to All India Radio: the station-level process, audition and recording steps, honest payment ranges, and how to write verse for the ear.
The whole process still begins the old way: with a letter to your nearest station. There is no national poem-submission portal for Akashvani, no upload form, no central inbox that routes your sonnet to the right producer. All India Radio is a federation of stations, each with its own Programme Executives, its own broadcast languages and its own literary calendar, and the poets you hear on air got there by writing to one specific station and being useful to one specific programme.
That decentralisation is actually your advantage. A poet in Jaipur is not competing with every poet in India, only with the ones who bothered to contact the Jaipur station. This guide covers the submission route step by step, what the fees genuinely look like, and how to write and read verse that survives the microphone.
The short version
You submit to a station, not to All India Radio as a whole. You address the Programme Executive who handles talks or literary programmes, you offer poems in a language that station broadcasts, and you include a brief bio and your phone number. If a producer likes the work, you may be called for a voice test or straight into a recording booking. After broadcast, you are paid a fixed casual-artist fee against a voucher and your bank details.
Two things surprise first-timers. The first is the pace: weeks of silence are normal, because producers pull from their contributor files when a slot opens, not when your letter arrives. The second is how repeatable it becomes. Once a station has recorded you and the broadcast went smoothly, you are no longer a stranger, and the second booking usually needs no letter at all.
Where poems actually air on AIR
Knowing the programme shapes helps you pitch precisely instead of vaguely asking for airtime. The recurring homes for poetry are these:
The submission process, step by step
Here is the sequence that working poets describe, from first contact to fee credit:
What it pays, honestly
Fees for casual artists are fixed by slab rather than negotiated, and they are modest by design; public broadcasting spreads a limited budget across an enormous number of contributors. Commonly reported figures range from a few hundred rupees for a brief youth-slot appearance to a few thousand rupees for an established poet featured in a prominent sammelan. Slabs differ by programme type and are revised from time to time, so ask the booking producer what the current fee is; it is a normal, professional question.
Do not measure the opportunity in one voucher. The durable value is threefold: a broadcast credit that Indian journals, festivals and grant panels still respect, a producer relationship that generates repeat bookings, and the discipline of writing to time, which quietly improves everything else you write.
Writing and reading for the ear
Radio strips your poem of everything visual. Line breaks, indentation, clever spacing: all gone. What survives is rhythm, image and voice, so choose poems whose effects live in sound. Concrete images beat abstractions on air, shorter syntactic units beat page-length sentences, and a strong closing line matters double, because a listener cannot glance back up the page.
Practise reading aloud at a pace slower than feels natural, and time yourself honestly; a producer who asks for three minutes means three minutes. If your craft in this area feels thin, it is very trainable. Writory Academy's free lessons on rhythm and sound devices are a sensible place to sharpen exactly the skills a microphone exposes.
Mistakes that get submissions ignored
Producers describe the same avoidable errors year after year. Poets write to the Delhi headquarters instead of their local station, so the letter dies in transit. They send poems in a language the station does not broadcast. They dump twenty poems into one envelope when three would be read. They forget a phone number, which on radio is fatal, because bookings happen by call. And they give up after one silence, when the honest timeline for a first booking is often several months and a second letter.
None of these are talent problems. They are process problems, and fixing them puts you ahead of most of the pile immediately.
This week
Within the next seven days, do three things. Identify your nearest Akashvani station and its literary programmes; an evening of listening tells you more than any guide. Draft your one-page letter with three poems in the station's language. Then read each poem aloud with a timer until you can state its length to the second. Post or email the letter before the week ends, note the date, and get back to writing while the file works its way to a producer's desk.
What poets can take from this
- Address a specific programme you have actually heard; producers can tell instantly who listens.
- Send three to five poems, never your collected works.
- Always include a phone number; radio bookings happen by call, not letter.
- Ask the booking producer what the current fee slab is; it is a normal professional question.
- Arrive at recordings early with printed copies of your poems in large, readable type.
- After a broadcast, send a one-line thank you; it keeps your name at the top of the contributor file.
Try it yourself
Take a poem you love on the page and rewrite it for a listener who will hear it exactly once: replace every visual effect with a sound effect, and end on a line that needs no rereading.
Questions
Does All India Radio accept poems from new, unpublished poets?
Yes, particularly through youth strands like Yuvavani and regional literary slots. Prior publication helps but is not required; a clear letter, poems in the station's broadcast language, and a decent voice test carry more weight than a CV.
How long does AIR take to respond to a poetry submission?
Weeks to months, and often the response is a phone call when a slot opens rather than a letter. Follow up once after about a month, then pitch the next nearest station rather than waiting indefinitely.
How much does All India Radio pay per poem or broadcast?
Payment is per booking, not per poem, and follows fixed casual-artist slabs. Reported figures run from a few hundred rupees for short youth slots to a few thousand for featured appearances, and slabs are revised periodically, so confirm the current rate when booked.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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