This site seeks to provide an accessible overview both to the general ways humans organize poetry, and to the specificities of each language's method.
The header links to three long pages: first on the nature of poetry and the definition we use, second on the most common forms of meter (the way rhythm is created in poetry), and third on rhyme, alliteration, and parallelism. A fourth page is a catalogue of techniques (including meter, rhyme and alliteration, parallelism, and ones that don't fall into those four), and a final page lists the languages and poems cited.
Then we have the map. Each marker opens a new page that introduces the language and sets its poetic traditions in context, discusses the general techniques used, and finally looks at the major genres of verse within them. Of course, depending on the language, this format isn't always followed; the page on K'iche' starts with two long excerpts and concludes with an analysis. Each page ends with a list of sources consulted.
Ideally the whole world would be dotted with markers—there's no place on earth where poetry does not exist—but this is, unfortunately, unrealistic. The Atlas begins with a random hodgepodge of seven languages, the only similarities between them being that they are not very widely spoken and are not classical languages:
The main reason for this is practical. For widely spoken languages like English (shudders), French, or Japanese, or classical languages with two millennia of history behind them like Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, or Classical Arabic, there are mind-bogglingly many types of poetry with a jaw-dropping volume of literature I'd have to read. Really, if I wanted to give any language with the sheer stature of Latin or Persian a fair shake, this site would never get started in the first place. I'd be stuck hunched over Virgil and trying and failing to make sense of Saadi all year.
I do think there's some value to focusing on relatively obscure languages first, especially since many of these very languages are withering away this very moment and taking their poetry with them.
On the other hand, thousands of not-widely-spoken, non-classical languages are also not covered. The reason for this is also practical. I'm not a college student, and the quantity of academic literature I have on hand are limited (and that's putting it mildly). Sometimes I know the poetry of some language has been studied, but I can't find the study, so no marker for it.
I hope more people will eventually contribute, but this is a personal project for now, I'm sticking to languages that aren't so small that I can find a study of them, but aren't so big that there's not the slightest possibility that I could digest it all.
The site also has a relative focus on traditional, or at least regulated, forms of poetry. This is, again, practical; modern poetry is so diverse that it's not realistic to cover them all, and something like genuinely free "free verse" would be nigh-impossible to properly describe.
I hope the Atlas might be useful to anyone interested in language or literature, including hobbyist linguists, conlangers, and especially as inspiration for English poets and songwriters. If poetry is an ocean, the scope of English verse is really just a small lagoon, and it hardly hurts to let some more water in—just think about haiku. Hell, even rhymes and iambic pentameter were foreign things, originally.
As of today (February 27, 2019), I'm a high schooler, junior year, with a hobbyist interest in linguistics and literature. I speak none of the seven languages on the map.
This is what I do instead of having friends.
I was half-serious there. But on a 100%-serious note, I've always wanted to make a website, and poetry has been a long-running passion of mine. Getting this website running is almost a dream come true.
No, and no.
The first entry was on Soqotri (sqt), an endangered language spoken on that island.
I fully expect there to be issues, a lot of them. Please contact me at worldpoetryatlas@gmail.com, which I'll check weekly.
I'm looking into opening the site up for collaboration, but for now, please write up the page you want (even better if it's in HTML format) and send it to me by the email above.