Washington, DC - Congressman Brian Higgins (NY-27) announced today that the Research Foundation of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo will receive $202,241 from the National Endowment of the Humanities to digitally archive the audio recordings of 425 notable poets.

“The University at Buffalo has always been a major contributor to Buffalo’s rich cultural history, home to literary treasures such as the original manuscripts of world renowned author James Joyce,” said Higgins. “The funds going to the University at Buffalo Library’s Poetry Collection will further enrich our community by preserving important recordings from poets of our time which otherwise may have been lost.”

"We are grateful for NEH's support of this project to digitize, catalog, and make accessible the Poetry Collection's recordings of poetry readings, lectures, interviews, conferences, and other literary events,” said Nancy Nuzzo, Director of Music and Special Collections at the University at Buffalo. “These ‘at risk’ audio materials document the development of innovative and avant-garde poetries and their communities throughout the second half of the twentieth century and Buffalo's role within that history. As a result of the NEH grant, these materials will now be preserved and made accessible for scholarship, teaching, and discovery, directly supporting the Poetry Collection's mission to promote the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry written in English."

Devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry in English and English translation, the University at Buffalo Libraries' Poetry Collection was founded in 1937 and contains over 100,000 volumes by every major and many minor poets writing in English. Recordings of poets reading from their own works, poets' notebooks, letters and manuscripts, and a wide variety of literary magazines are included. Approximately 5,000 little magazine titles, 1,200 current subscriptions, and a number of portraits, sculptures, and photographs round out the collection.