Rap Genius Launches Poetry Brain

By Jason Boog 

Writer Austin Allen has joined Rap Genius to lead the site’s new Poetry Brain initiative.

Rap Genius scored $15 million in funding earlier this year, an investment to expand the social network of people that love to annotate rap lyrics. Allen will help poetry play a larger role at the site.

Here’s more about the site: “Rap Genius users and editors have already posted and annotated hundreds of classic literary texts on the site … All of these are housed for now on the main RG site, but will ultimately move to poetrybrain.com, which currently exists as a blog for the project. Since November, the Poetry Brain community has also been steadily growing through Facebook and Twitter.”

The Johns Hopkins University MFA graduate served as an editor at Abbeville Press and edited the homepage for Big Think. Allen can be reached with comments or questions at austin [at] rapgenius [dot] com.

Over email, Allen explained how poets can get involved in the project: “Poets are encouraged to add their own work to the site and comment on it through our Verified Artists program, in which hundreds of amateur and professional lyricists (including rappers Nas, Common, and 50 Cent) have participated since the site’s inception. Literary scholars and critics are also invited to register as Verified experts on the authors (past or present) whose work they study … we will be featuring the writing and commentary of prominent poets and critics every month.”