Collecting 40 Years of Voice

Poetry, the world’s the oldest art form, is as vibrant and necessary today as it was for the first storytellers. From sonnet to slam, from meter to open mic, poetry is a literature that is continually evolving. The UA Poetry Center has made an invaluable contribution to this oral tradition by recording hundreds of readings by visiting and local writers. Since the early 1960s, the Center has captured the visionary voices of such luminaries as Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, social-activist poet Adrienne Rich, as well as UA professors and distinguished student writers. Today, the Poetry Center is hard at work digitizing its collection of 500 reel-to-reel and audio cassette tapes, steadily making more and more of these readings accessible through dedicated listening stations. These recordings are readily available to the public. After all, poetry is meant to be heard.