The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center has achieved a significant milestone with its VOCA archive, now featuring captions for more than 12,000 poetry recordings.
The VOCA archive, which houses audio and visual recordings of poetry from the center, began this project in 2021. The endeavor involved extensive efforts from professional transcribers, center staff, and interns. Web developers also redesigned the VOCA website to incorporate these new features.
The updated archive, which spans recordings dating back to 1963, is now one of the largest captioned digital poetry collections available. Sarah Kortemeier, the UA Poetry Center library director, expressed her long-held ambition to complete this project.
“It was a massive, staggering amount of work, but so worth doing,” Kortemeier said. “I’m really hopeful that this project will be a trailblazer and show others that it can be done and is worth doing.”
The VOCA archive now includes approximately six million words of transcribed text. Since the 1960s, it has featured numerous renowned poets, including Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and National Book Award winners.
The captions make the archive accessible to a wider audience, including those in noisy or quiet environments where audio may be disrupted or inaudible. Kortemeier noted that the captions are also beneficial for viewing in public spaces.
Languages featured in the archive include Chinese, Czech, and Latin, among others. Kortemeier acknowledged the extensive specialized work required, relying on experts in various languages.
The Poetry Center plans to continue transcribing and captioning additional languages in the future.