Poetry needs to be read aloud to bring its full pleasure to an audience, the publisher of a ground-breaking DVD-book of verse tells Fiona McCann.

"Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?"

THESE ARE THE final lines of Elizabeth Alexander's Ars Poetica #100: I Believe, the urgency in the question apparent even as it is encountered in the silence of the page. Yet when the poet herself fixes you with a clear, dark gaze and addresses you, the reader, boldly, baldly with this final question, her human voice rising with the interrogative cadence, she brings an added potency to the poem.

For poetry is the human voice, and none knows this better than Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books, who for 30 years has been searching out and publishing the new voices engaging with this ancient art. Yet three decades and thousands of poems on from when he first established his publishing house, Astley felt there was something more required in order to bring the full pleasure of poetry to its audience.

"Poetry does have to be heard," he explains. "It's an aural art. All the sound aspects that come into the poem, you only get them when you read it aloud." In December 2005, a series of events served to remind him of how vital it is to receive poetry in this way. At a literary salon hosted by nonagenarian artist Louise Bourgeois in New York, the poetry readings that formed a key part of the afternoon reminded Astley not only of the enjoyment to be garnered from hearing poetry read aloud, but of how much hinged on its delivery.

The following day, he was privy to a private audience with Stanley Kunitz, where the Massachusetts poet read and recited some of his own work in a poignant, intimate moment that had a profound effect on Astley. From these two events, the seeds for In Person were sown, a project that has since developed into what is believed to be the first DVD-book of poetry.

An anthology of selected poems from 30 poets from throughout the world, what makes In Person so exceptional is that the book is accompanied by two DVDs, containing six hours of the poets reading all the poems printed in the collection. Such is its impact that it is impossible to imagine it has never been done before, but the geneses of this project, as Astley describes in the book's introduction, lay in those events in New York only two and a half years ago.

"It really came from that private reading with Stanley Kunitz in New York, who was then a hundred years old, and afterwards feeling what a rare occasion it was, and how wonderful it would have been to be able to catch that, on film," recalls Astley. "A year later he was dead." From this lost opportunity came the sense that there were many others waiting to be grasped, and Astley set about the task of capturing other poets on film before it was too late. "We were hoping to record a number of the older poets, because they may not be around for that long," he says.

With the help of filmmaker Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Astley set about doing just that, approaching some 30 poets in the Bloodaxe stable and asking them if they would be filmed reading their work. "None of them had done this before, it was totally new to them," explains Astley, who pays tribute to the "courage" these 30 poets exhibited in embracing the task.

"They were often are a bit nervous about it," he admits, adding that some took to it quicker than others. "Philip Levine was quite okay about it, because he didn't see it as reading to a camera, he was reading to us," says Astley. "And reading to people is a timeless art."

A timeless art that Astley wished to preserve in all its intimacy, eager as he was to maintain a sense of the private nature of the transaction between reader and listener. With this in mind, he kept the intrusion of equipment and personnel to a minimum. "Normally if you want to do something like this, you have to get a whole film unit to do it," he explains. "But with the technology that we now have, it is possible to do it all yourself. Pamela just used one camera, which is why the style of the camera is such that you don't get all those shots you normally do. It's more intimate."

THIS INTIMACY IS made all the more apparent by the unpolished realism of the footage, with Brendan Kennelly seated smilingly beside a blue chest in an otherwise sparse room as he delivers his five poems in a single take, or Benjamin Zephaniah, looming large in his own living room as his words leap from the screen. These are close up, personal portraits of people in their own homes or in private spaces, reading to Astley and Robertson-Pearce, and through their camera, reaching into the homes and private spaces of their readers.

For poet Imtiaz Dharker, one of the 30 poets involved, the pared down nature of the project makes for an immediacy of impact that would be diluted in a more formal setting. "The things about these recordings is that it takes the poet away from some intimidating, rarefied hall where people clap politely, and puts that poet into your living room," she says. For Dharker, there is a particular power in the camera, allowing as it does for the transmission of a much more nuanced reading. "The camera is something that is one of the most intimate ways of communicating," she says. "You have to know that every inflection is going to be seen and heard, and it picks up all kinds of things that the human eye and ear can't immediately pick up," she says.

The settings for each reading were carefully chosen by the poets, where possible, with input from Astley and Robertson-Pearce, who felt the locations lent the readings something personal.

"In many cases we filmed them in their homes so that they were in their settings in that sense, in many cases where the poems had been written, with their things around them," recalls Astley. Much of the ease and intimacy of these poetic portraits is also down to Astley's relationship with so many of the poets involved, forged over long years of collaboration.

For Dharker, the sense that she was reading to people that she already trusted helped her to shake off her inhibitions. "The fact that it's Neil Astley sitting there, that I'm reading to two people, that makes it quite a different reading to one that I'd give to a large audience," she says simply. "It changes it."

Ireland's Michael O'Siadhail, whose In Personreading coincided with his own 60th birthday, pays tribute also to Robertson-Pearce, who transformed the camera into an eye for all readers into a private world of poetry. "She's a warm person, and it's the gift of a good filmmaker to put you at your ease when you're doing it, and give you the sensation that you're talking to them," says O'Siadhail. "In many ways, she stood for the reader or the viewer."

What Astley and Robertson-Pearce have created for poetry readers is an opportunity to witness some of the most important poets in the English language alive today giving voice to their own work. This, for Dharker, also adds a vital element in our understanding of a poem.

"I believe quite strongly that it's a very good way to make poetry accessible: to have the poet read and to hear the poet's own voice, reading the poem, taking the breath where it's wanted. The idiosyncratic reading of the poet is actually quite a valuable thing," she says.

ENGAGING WITH THE newest and fastest-growing forms of delivery, Astley has also made several of the poets involved available on YouTube, widening the project's scope far beyond the traditional bookshop walls. Disseminating poetry through this free-wheeling, 21st-century medium feels revolutionary, and yet this decision to incorporate the ever-changing present fits with the impetus to forge something of historical worth.

"This will have an extraordinary archival value," says O'Siadhail, and readings from poets as diverse as Fleur Adcock, James Berry, Taha Muhammad Ali and Galway Kinnell are testimony to this. The written word winds through their varying accents and rhythms, with many poems read in two languages to give the reader a true sense of the sonic beauty inherent in the work in its original tongue.

It is a gift to poetry lovers on the birthday of one of their most beloved publishing houses, with Bloodaxe's 30 extraordinary years celebrated through these 30 extraordinary voices. "This is a very fitting way to celebrate 30 years by delving into the richness of those 30 years, and into all the voices that Neil [Astley] uncovered," says Dharker.

With its international launch taking place in Dublin today, In Personis testimony to the human voice that is poetry, a fitting celebration of an art that has reflected and shaped human experience since the birth of language, and a publishing house that is helping to make it heard.

Poetry Ireland presents an evening with Neil Astley, featuring highlights from the In Person DVD: Damer Hall, St Stephen's Green, 7pm this evening