CPI Design Plan

Topic/Purpose

The aim of this project is to interview poets and scholars on the current state of poetry and catalog their responses into an oral history archive. Poets will primarily be visitors for the Beall Poetry Festival, but we plan to expand to include others. The interviewees will be asked to comment on the contemporary poetry landscape, how they situate themselves and their work within it, and where poetry is trending toward. As such, this project will take an active role preserving the poetry of the present through helping to curate the literary history that is currently taking place and that is ongoing.

Methodology

The interviews will last approximately 30 minutes long and be composed of roughly 10 set questions. During the interview, interviewees will be asked about the perceptions of the poetry of the present, what and who seems to be impacting and influencing it, if and how they see themselves and their poetry within that scene, and anticipations for the future of poetry.

We are limiting our definition of contemporary poetry to the poetry of the present. This is a period that few scholars have yet to take on, providing an opportunity to begin historizing present poetics. 

As such, this project will utilize oral history methods to construct oral history artifacts. We will utilize the tools available to us through the Baylor University Institute of Oral History (BUIOH), including microphones, cameras (as needed), lighting, and recording and editing equipment. Artifacts will be catalogued within the Institute of Oral History archives. There may be other opportunities to include other sorts of print and digital artifacts and media within the archive.

The interviews and their associated transcriptions will be stored in and accessible through the CPI’s digital archival space as part of the BUIOH’s digital collections. This will allow for outside engagement with the archive and further encourage scholars to visit Baylor virtually and in-person to conduct research. We also plan to promote the project through both the Beall Poetry Festival, our connections within communities that write and study poetry, and through fostering an online presence. 

Scope

The scope for this project is present to ongoing. While interviewees might discuss earlier influences, figures, and/or texts, the primary focus of this project is contemporary poets and poetry. Similarly, while the interviewees may reference non-English language poetry, this project’s primary focus will be on English language poetry.

Potential Narrators

Each spring, Baylor University’s Beall Poetry Festival brings in highly heralded poets along with a prominent poetry critic for multiple days of poetry readings, class visits, a round table discussion, a lecture, and other formal and informal events. Thus, this project seeks to build its foundation through utilizing the access to a regular rotation of preeminent poets and critics that the festival provides to gather data on and map how those directly engaging in and with the current poetic discourses and movements might describe and define the poetry of the present. 

Though the narrators will primarily be contemporary poets and poetry critics participating in the Beall Poetry Festival, there is also the potential to eventually interview poets and scholars who are not directly attached to Baylor and/or the Beall Poetry Festival. Interviewers will include English faculty, interested graduate students, and other volunteers.  

Selected Archives

We will use the archives in the BUIOH. 

Targeted Outcomes

There are several direct and implied desired outcomes for this project. Primarily, we want to collect a series of oral history artifacts for the benefit of current and future poetry researchers and scholars. Poets are often interviewed in print and on podcasts about their poetry and process, but rarely, if ever, asked about their perceptions of and opinions on the state of poetry. Additionally, there are few, if any, current contemporary oral history projects. In this way, this project will fill two gaps at once through creating a living archive of contemporary poets’ and scholars’ thoughts on the present and future of poetry and poetics.

Some hopeful, indirect outcomes include further fostering an atmosphere and community which appreciates poetry at Baylor. Concretely, we hope this project will support the development of the current Creative Writing minor and an eventual major and bring further attention to the Beall Poetry Festival. Further, the project will provide professional development opportunities for our graduate students and attract outside scholars to conduct research through and at Baylor University. 

Timeline

This project will mostly operate in the spring semesters, centered around the Beall Poetry Festival. However, it will be mostly ongoing.