Who We Are

By encouraging innovative teaching, scholarly research, creative exploration, and public engagement with poetry, the project seeks to deepen appreciation for poetic form and explore the myriad ways in which poetry shapes and is shaped by human experience.

It comprises a cluster of faculty, poets, and graduate students who work on poetry and poetics in the ÃÛÌÒ½´Department of English. ÃÛÌÒ½´Project Poëtica will not only contribute to academic scholarship but also engage a broad audience in the appreciation and understanding of poetry as a vital and dynamic form of human expression.

Founding Director

 

  • David Caplan - Director of ÃÛÌÒ½´Project Poëtica

    David Caplan

    David Caplan (he/him) is the Daisy Deane Frensley Chair in English Literature and the author of seven books of literary criticism and poetry, including Rhyme’s Challenge: Hip Hop, Poetry, and Contemporary Rhyming, Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form, and American Poetry: A Very Short Introduction (all from Oxford University Press). Twice he has served as a Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature. His other honors include an Individual Excellence Award in Criticism from the Ohio Arts Council and the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry from the Virginia Quarterly Review.

     

Staff  

 

  • Rosanne Brooks - Coordinator

    Rosanne Brooks (she/her) is a Ph.D. student at ÃÛÌÒ½´Methodist University. Her primary interest is in how representations of gender attitudes in late Victorian literature reconcile with historical evidence of gender expression in greater print culture. Her work centers on depictions of the British Music Hall as a place where class and gender are both fixed and inchoate. She is the winner of SMU’s 2023 Pueppke Writing Prize for outstanding graduate student essay.

     

  • Kit Freeman - Project Poëtica Social Media Manager

    Kit Freeman - Social Media Manager

    Kit Freeman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student specializing in poetics and Romantic poetry. Her work on the Blakes was recently shortlisted (finalist) for a Fulbright. She intends on writing her dissertation on the poetics of Romantic collaboration under the supervision of Dr. David Caplan.