Born Digital Poetry
Project Pilot | Poet’s Guide | Exhibition | Project Leadership
The WashU Libraries’ Born Digital Poetry: Planning for the Future of Literary Archives project addresses key questions about the acquisition, discoverability, preservation, and use of born-digital poetry collections. Born Digital Poetry is the first project of its kind to focus on born-digital poetry materials, setting a precedent for future digital preservation in literary archives.
Funded through the Mellon Foundation’s Public Knowledge program, the $250,000 award supports the development of innovative methods to steward born-digital poetry collections, preventing the future loss of late 20th- and 21st-century poetic works. Central to the initiative are two main components: poet-driven curation, which provides tools for digital preservation, and the processing of digital content, which allows for the exploration of innovative ways poets create in the digital age.
Project Pilot
The Born Digital Poetry Project aims to better understand how poetry is made in the digital era, how archives and libraries can ensure future discoverability and long-term preservation, and to create a collaborative community to explore the evolving intersection of technology and poetry.
The project includes a pilot to further process the digital materials of renowned poet and translator, Professor Mary Jo Bang.
Poet’s Guide
The Poet’s Guide to Digital Preservation is a product of the WashU Libraries Born-Digital Poetry Project, supported in part by the Mellon Foundation. This guide serves poets and other creatives to safeguard their outputs against loss.
Born Digital Poetry Exhibition
Created as part of the Born Digital Poetry Project, the Some days, everything is a machine exhibition traces the shifting, innovative, and increasingly hybrid creative practices of poet and translator Mary Jo Bang across analog and digital formats.
The onsite exhibition runs from February 7 to April 12, 2026, in the Ginkgo Reading Room of John M. Olin Library.
Born Digital Poetry at the Libraries
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Books and Authors Manuscripts/Modern Literature Collection
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Grants Manuscripts/Modern Literature Collection
Project Leadership
Under the guidance of an advisory board, the project is led by Nadia Ghasedi, associate university librarian for Special Collections, Preservation, and Digital Strategies; Joy Novak, head of Special Collections; Joel Minor, curator of the Modern Literature Collection; Mitch Sumner, head of Digital Preservation; Sarah Weeks, web and email archives coordinator; and Kelli West, digital preservation specialist. The project also includes two fellows: Christa Kileff and Sarah María Medina Pérez.
The Born Digital Poetry project acknowledges the support of the Mellon Foundation and credits the WashU Libraries and the Modern Literature Collection for providing the space and infrastructure necessary for the project.
Advisory Board
- Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu
- Mary Jo Bang
- Lori Birrell
- David Faulds
- Mariecris Gatlabayan
- Layla A. Goushey
- Jennifer Gunter King
- Niki Herd
- Tsitsi Jaji
- Annie Johnson
- Aditi Machado
- Nina Mamikunian
- Julie Swarstad Johnson
- Paul Tran