WHO: Wiebke Denecke (MIT), Joshua Bennett (MIT), Wasalu Jaco/Lupe Fiasco (MIT), Andrew Ollett (University of Chicago), Di Wang (Hunan University)
WHAT: The Challenge
Builds an interactive “living anthology”—a forest of “Trees of Life”—of poetry and lyrics, past, present, in languages from around the world (accompanied by English translations); the “seeds” of the trees are comparative couplings of resonating poems/lyrics from any place, time, and medium, by poets famous or forgotten, or by netizens contributing to the website; poems are flanked by personal reflections of the “digital anthologist” contributing to any given tree of mutually resonating poems, captured in video shorts; and by explanatory vignettes that uncover the historical, cultural, and aesthetic underpinnings and pleasures of literary traditions in comparative dialogue.
The broader goal is to make netizens into anthologists and avid readers, interpreters, and users or producers of poetry; fosters cross-cultural appreciation of the human experience and “netizen diplomacy” through poetry; invites people from around the world to collectively appreciate, translate, rediscover, create, compare poetry of any times and places as a form of globe-spanning, cross-cultural digital communion through poetry.
Potential impacts include of course a deeper and richer understanding of poetry from many times and places for participating global netizens, students, and partnering colleagues, but also more generally a stronger global presence of poetry and poetry-lovers in cyberspace. Our interactive anthology also enhances the EQ, curiosity, and creativity for participants. We aim to help people rediscover poetry as a basic human impulse and a spiritual tool of our everyday–a function poetry has had in many cultures around the world before the advent of the novel as the dominant global genre.
By inviting people from around the world to collectively appreciate, translate, rediscover, compare and create poetry of many times and places we engage in “netizen diplomacy,” powered by verse and lyrics as a form of globe-spanning cross-cultural experience and community building.
Lastly, our living anthology digital platform is an experiment in reimagining the current academic study of literatures: we hope to gain insights and tools that allow us to overcome the siloed studies by country and language, or local periodization and genres, and develop a new species of literary studies: the study of literature as the contemplative exploration of the human experience and the collective reflection on the ongoing growth of poetries from our world’s neighborhoods.
HOW CAN I JOIN? Activities & Events in 2025
- Spring 2025: Blueprinting Workshop
- Workshop for our new website’s functionality, including interactive features, multimedia capacity, architecture with embedded anthology-building rules, prototypes for video stories and contextual vignettes, publicity strategy
- Spring 2025: Launch of “World Poetries for Our Neighborhood” Website
- With students & colleagues from selected partner institutions
- Fall 2026: Experimental Literature (21 L) Subject “World Poetries for Our Neighborhood”
- Read through “living anthologies” each pair of resonating poems has generated, exploring patterns of growth and cross-linguistic/cross-cultural connectivity, creating response poems
- Fall 2027: World Poetries Slam Event & Conference
- With select contributing netizens, poets, scholars, and the MIT community
For further details, contact the project leaders.