SMU Symposium on Poetic Form: Poetry and Data
Due Date: 05-15-2025
Papers are invited for “Poetry and Data,” a panel at the SMU Symposium on Poetic Form, organized by SMU Project Poëtica, to be held on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas on 23 and 24 February 2026.
Does access to data change the way we read poetry? Should it change the way we read poetry? How do scholarly tools and digital resources, which make data in historical documents and in primary and secondary texts more accessible, affect our relationship to data? This panel is interested in ways of thinking about the intersection of data and poetics, whether historic or contemporary, theoretical or practical. Topics may include data mining, AI, X, Instagram poets, erasure poetry, surface reading, poetics, and other ideas. Participants will include Meredith Martin, author of the recent monograph Poetry’s Data: Digital Humanities and the History of Prosody (Princeton UP, 2025). Alternatively, papers might consider how poets manipulate data as a creative practice. Please submit a 250-word abstract by 15 May 2025 to Rosanne Brooks (rosanneb@smu.edu) and indicate “Poetry and Data” in the subject heading.