About this project

Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day (APOD) is a public arts project that utilizes a QR code, posted and displayed at high-traffic locations across the Auburn campus, in order to provide our community with daily access to contemporary poetry. Any person on campus has multiple opportunities—riding Tiger Transit, waiting for the elevator, or filing through the line at Starbucks—to scan the QR code with a smart phone and immediately read a new contemporary poem each day.

The poems “published” on Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day are accessible with the use of a free downloadable QR code reader app: iTunes or Google Play . These poems address themes as universal as love and as timeless as the changing of the seasons, and they represent some of the newest and best poetry being written in America today, especially by younger poets early in their careers. Public art inspires public discourse, and APOD presents poetry that our campus community, particularly our students, can relate to, encouraging the discussion of culture, history, and identity, and demonstrating Auburn’s commitment of engaging with a larger, complex global community. In addition to the daily poems shared across Auburn’s campus, each spring, as part of National Poetry Month in April, APOD will bring one of our featured poets to Auburn for a reading and to speak with students about the act of writing poetry today.

The idea for Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day originally came out of the successful celebration of Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day in Auburn’s English Department in the spring of 2013. Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day takes place every year as part of National Poetry Month, and encourages people across the country to carry copies of poems in their pockets on that day, and to hand them out to friends and strangers alike in the hopes of spreading poetry a bit further into the world. Faculty and students demonstrated such enthusiasm for this celebration that Professor Keetje Kuipers, a poet herself, began to dream of a way of sharing poetry with students across the Auburn campus every day of the year. Soon after, a fortuitous meeting with Jaena Alabi, a librarian at Auburn’s Ralph Brown Draughon Library, presented an opportunity for collaboration, and Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day was born.

We are able to bring these poems to Auburn’s campus through the assistance and support of many parties. Our partnerships with small presses have allowed Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day to quickly secure the permission to use hundreds of contemporary poems that might appeal to the Auburn community. Our small press partner in the inaugural year of Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day was Copper Canyon Press, who showed great enthusiasm for our project. In our second year, we are fortunate to be collaborating with BOA Editions, a not-for-profit press celebrating in 2016 its 40th anniversary of publishing poetry and literary prose. In addition to the support of the English Department, the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, and the College of Liberal Arts, we are deeply indebted to a seed grant from Auburn University’s Office of the Vice President for Research.

While a number of daily poem websites already exist, no university has ever created such a publicly accessible project on its campus, and our small press partners are enthusiastic about taking our model to other universities around the country. Aubie’s Poem-of-the-Day is a wonderful example of the partnership between writers, publishers, and academic institutions utilizing some of the most cutting edge social media and technology available. We are proud to offer these poems to our community, and hope that you enjoy them every day.