Established in 2003 with a grant from Ruth Lilly, Poetry Foundation was designed to support Poetry Magazine, an institution in American arts publishing, as well as to fund, develop, and support other projects to reestablish a place for poetry in American popular culture. RubyStudio collaborated with Winterhouse to design, build, and host the foundation's multifaceted online ventures, including American Life in Poetry, a weekly column by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser; Poetry Out Loud, a National High School recitation contest; and PoetryFoundation.org, the largest online poetry database in the English language.
The Client
Founded in 2003 with a landmark grant from Ruth Lilly, the Poetry Foundation was established with an ambitious dual mission: to support Poetry magazine — one of the most venerable institutions in American arts publishing — and to reestablish poetry as a living, relevant presence in American popular culture. It was a mission that demanded more than a website. It demanded an entire digital ecosystem.
The Challenge
The Poetry Foundation's online ambitions were broad and multifaceted from the start. They needed a flagship destination that could house the largest online poetry database in the English language. They needed to support distinct editorial initiatives with their own identities and audiences. And they needed all of it to feel cohesive, accessible, and worthy of the literary tradition it represented.
Our Approach
In partnership with Winterhouse, RubyStudio designed, built, and hosted the Poetry Foundation's full suite of online ventures — bringing both creative and technical expertise to a project that required both in equal measure.
The centerpiece was PoetryFoundation.org, now home to 48,786 poems and the largest online poetry archive in the English language. Designing a database of that scale required careful thinking about how readers actually find and experience poetry — balancing search precision with the kind of serendipitous discovery that makes a poetry archive genuinely pleasurable to browse.
Alongside the flagship site, RubyStudio built and supported two distinct initiatives under the Poetry Foundation umbrella. American Life in Poetry — a weekly column curated by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser — required a platform that honored the intimacy and regularity of the editorial format. Poetry Out Loud, the National High School Poetry Recitation Contest, demanded a different kind of experience entirely: one that could serve students, teachers, and administrators across the country with clarity and ease.
The Outcome
The result was a coherent digital ecosystem for one of America's most important literary institutions — three distinct platforms, unified by a shared creative vision, built to serve audiences ranging from high school students encountering poetry for the first time to scholars and lifelong readers exploring an archive of nearly 50,000 poems.