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Paul Alan Baker tries to offer a wide range of spoken word performances on his weekly radio show "Wordsalad," which airs Thursdays on WSUM. - Jacob Ela Photo

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All around the city, or at least as far as the station's signal can reach, WSUM/FM 91.7 host Paul Alan Baker knows a lot of radio dials flee from his program at 1 p.m. on Thursdays.

The student-run station has its rock and its hip-hop, some heavy metal and some jazz. But once a week the station has poetry and spoken word in all its forms, some as contemporary as hip-hop music, some so avant-garde it seems to be nonsense.

"I'm this big break in the day when I can just hear people turning their radios off," joked Baker. "People just have the music on all day as background and then all of a sudden this weird, experimental poetry comes on and they think, 'What the hell?' "

Baker is the host of "Wordsalad," an hour that features authors reading from their own works. The program plays selections from familiar names like Allen Ginsburg and Gertrude Stein to more recent artists like Ani DiFranco and former Madison rapper El Guante.

Slam poetry might be the most popular and contemporary of spoken word performance, but Baker's show gives it historical context and contrasts it to what else is out there.

"There's a rich history of poetry readings and there's a lot of stuff that's been recorded," he said. "Since I've started doing the show, I've found out so much."

Baker isn't a poet; he's a fan. He keeps his words brief on "Wordsalad" and lets the work speak for itself. But in person he's as enthusiastic and effusive on the topic of spoken word as a fan of sports, sci-fi or music would be about their passion.

"Wordsalad" began in July 2006. Baker also has another show on WSUM, a Friday world music program. He had been in radio back in the 1970s as an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, his hometown. He came to Madison for graduate school in 1984 and now works as a senior university relations specialist for the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

He got the urge to get back into radio again recently, starting with a classical music show on WORT. Then he learned WSUM was open to members of the community as well as students.

"It's 99 percent students, but they'll let old farts like me come in from the community or campus," said Baker, 53. "If you have a good show proposal or have something that's unique, you can do it."

He started with the world music show called "Caravan," which airs on Fridays, then shifted gears.

"I thought, 'I'm an English major, I should be doing something with language arts,' " he said.

As a student, his studies were more in medieval and Renaissance literature and he didn't have much of an interest in 20th-century work. That has changed over the years, he said.

"I just became interested in contemporary writing, and poetry and prose that's really beyond the pale and out of the box that kind of plays with your head and twists your mind a little bit," he said.

"So I discover Gertrude Stein and all this stuff I thought was nonsense. She was one of the most brilliant people living at the time. I keep reading her work and think, 'Why does it make me so uncomfortable? Is it because her syntax is all screwed up on purpose? Is it because she just repeats stuff and repeats stuff?' Sometimes she'll write a sentence using the most words possible and I think, 'Get to the point, woman!' And then I realize it's for effect."

Baker's show follows a certain format. He alternates readings between male and female voices, with music in between as a "palate-cleanser." He tries to keep readings at 3-5 minutes, although some will go as long as 8 minutes.

He tries to provide a balance between "academic, cerebral poetry" and "earthy, emotional poetry." He's been playing more slam poetry lately, he says, in anticipation of the National Poetry Slam (see story on page 24).

He finds the works on CDs, from a vast audio archive at the University of Pennsylvania and gives credit to the resources at UbuWeb (www.ubu.com), a site that aggregates links to poetry and spoken word on the Internet. He makes some recordings of his own at local readings and some people send him his work. He'll also research work and contact a writer through his or her MySpace page and request audio files.

He has a "Wordsalad" blog at wordsalad.wordpress.com that features playlists for every show.

Baker acknowledged that anybody could find the stuff he finds, but he tries to make it locally relevant.

"A relatively small percentage of what I play is by local poets, but I do try to promote local readings," he said.

While he hears feedback from those whose work he plays, he doesn't hear much from the general public about his show. He just hopes not everybody is turning it off when the "crazy stuff" comes on the air.

"If I were going for popularity, I'd do heavy metal," he said. "Or play Garrison Keillor all day."