Poets as Public Scholars

Contemporary Poetics in an Age of Social Media

By C. R. Grimmer

Subjects: Digital Projects, Writing, Media Studies, New Media
Open Access : 9780472999101, 160 pages, 6 x 9, July 2026

The open-access publication of this book was supported by The Eugene B. Power Fund
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12629166
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Table of Contents

Models ways poetry can drive public scholarship in the digital age

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Video Introduction
Introduction
Chapter 1: “Camea Davis on Critical Poetic Inquiry”
Chapter 2: “A.D. Carson on Hip Hop Poetics and Black Feminist Geographies”
Chapter 3: “Stevi Costa on Queer, Feminist, & Literary Burlesque”
Chapter 4: “Patrick Milian on Writing Embodied Knowledge From the Sphygmograph to Arca”
Chapter 5: “Tyrone Williams on Racial Capitalism and Poets on Social Media Platforms”
Chapter 6: “Woogee Bae on Ecopoetics and Poetry Communities”
Chapter 7: “Cameron Awkward-Rich on Writing Poetry 'In the Break' of Black and Trans Dialectics”
Bonus Content: “Scholars on Video Platforms”
 

Description

Poets as Public Scholars is a multimedia project that interrogates how poet-scholars use digital platforms to expand access and visibility for underrepresented voices, but also to critique the commodification, extraction, and erasure practices embedded in neoliberal literary circulation. Framed by two core questions—how poets teach public scholarship through networked media, and how to support underrepresented poets without reinforcing market-driven erasure—the collection offers videos for student and public engagement, essays for scholarly audiences, and discussion questions for classroom use.
Structured around seven video dialogues and seven critical essays, the book features contributions from poet-scholars including Camea Davis, A.D. Carson, Tyrone Williams, Patrick Milian, Stevi Costa, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Woogee Bae. Each chapter examines the material and affective economies that shape poetic production and reception, while proposing alternative, community-rooted infrastructures for literary and cultural labor. Designed for layered audiences, the video interviews model public-facing discourse, while the companion essays situate the work within critical conversations in literature, cultural theory, and media studies. With included discussion questions by Dr. Molly Ubbesen (University of Minnesota Rochester) and open access availability, Poets as Public Scholars functions as both a teaching tool and a theoretical intervention for scholars and educators seeking to integrate anti-racist, anti-capitalist approaches to literary and digital humanities pedagogy.

C. R. Grimmer is Assistant Professor of English at Utah State University.

“Poets as Public Scholars examines how an artist-scholar may gain new insights into the material as they work with it. As poets and other artists begin to break the expectations of what a book can and cannot do, C. R. Grimmer is doing the same with learning.”

- Tyree Daye, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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