About the CPI

The Contemporary Poetry Initiative (CPI)’s goal is to collect artifactual content and record oral history interviews that reflect and contextualize the recent or current landscape of contemporary poetry. 

A central element of CPI is its oral history project. The CPI team, consisting of Baylor University faculty and graduate students, began interviewing Beall Poetry Festival featured poets and critics in 2023, starting with Sumita Chakraborty, A. Van Jordan, and Shane McCrae. CPI aims to continue interviewing Beall Poetry Festival poets and critics and aspires to soon be able to expand the project to include participants beyond the festival.

CPI is also making plans to expand its repository to include other artifacts and recordings. For further information about CPI’s oral history project, please see our design plan.