A 900 acre tract of land in Brecknock Township, Pennsylvania has been cleared and leveled in anticipation of ground breaking for a new “Poetry Campus.” Venture capital group Coleridge Limited is the lead investor in this eastern Lancaster County project which will be completed in the next 12 months.

This new campus will feature its own power substation to supply energy needs which are anticipated to be in the gigawatts. Also, the Brecknock Township zoning board is meeting next week to hear community input on a proposal to divert the Conestoga River to supply its cooling needs. The poetry center’s cooling system will require in excess of one million gallons per day.

Coleridge CEO, Tyson Defrankus, addressed the township at its last meeting. “In order to do poetry at scale, we have to invest in infrastructure. They are the physical foundation for this new era where poetry will be at the center of our daily lives.” He said that Coleridge is investing in poetry centers like this around the country. Firms like Coleridge are called “hyperscalers” because of their push to rapidly build the infrastructure that poetry requires.

Aarav Pullattu, CEO of Google, another hyperscaler, was asked if the massive investment in poetry centers is a risky financial bubble. He said, “The risk of under investing in poetry is greater than the risk of overinvesting. We are already seeing everyday life becoming more poetry centric and we believe that in the near future, poetry will become as essential to us as electricity.”

The expansion of poetry into all aspects of life is not lost on corporate bosses like Craig Leggett, CEO of Lancaster-based Armstrong World Industries. “I see a day when we become a poetry-centric company and the majority of our revenue comes from verse. We’ve already transitioned one of our vinyl flooring production lines to Alexandrine quatrains. We’re racing to stay ahead of our competitors, particularly the Japanese, who have a lead in this with their expertise in Haiku.”

Higher Education is also rushing to keep up with this transition. President of Franklin & Marshall College, Dr. Demarkus Grosventnor says, “It’s the job of higher education to train the next generation of poets as well as all the workers that will be required to build the infrastructure poets will need. Here at Franklin & Marshall, we’re working on a plan to transform our curriculum. Rather than expanding course work in areas like economics and computer science, we’re going to focus on building skills in areas like using figurative language and rhyming.”

The poetry revolution has been building for years and the question is can society adapt fast enough. Dr. Ulny Milineri, the Gunther Nionakis Professor of Humanities at Humbolt University says, “The spread of poetry into everyday life has been so fast that society is reeling from the change. Institutions that we have relied on for stability like newspapers, churches, schools and governments have been shaken to their core. Some may not even survive the change.”

CEO of Apple, Jim Kook, addressed this level of change in his keynote at the Worldwide Poetry Forum held in Las Vegas last month. “I never thought we’d see the day, but the era of mobile phones is coming to an end. We see a future where poetry anthologies replace mobile devices. And we envision a time when human-to-human interaction is not intermediated by technology but instead it’s just one person reading a poem to another. It’s hard to imagine, but that’s where we’re heading and Apple will help lead that change.” He also addresses the issue of economic investment. “It will take a moonshot- level investment, trillions of dollars, but we’re committed to taking our customers into that future.”

Futurologist Onyx Grainberry has been studying how this transition will change the world of work. “Today many of us work alone in remote settings connecting with others using technology. But in the very near future, we will work together, literally, in small groups of poetry circles. Picture three or four people sitting together reading to each other from books. It’s hard to imagine but it’s coming!” says Grainberry.

As poetry becomes central to our lives, our Executive Editor, John Avery, shares his In and Out list for 2026.

In:                                                       Out:

Rock Cairns                                        AI

Belted Tunics                                      Patagonia Vests

Naming your car                                 Uber

Caligraphy                                           X

Acorn-based diets                               Starbucks

Creole immersion for kids                  Emojis

Rheki for pets                                     Autocracy

Raising feral hogs                               Fox News

Ice boating                                          Netflix

Balaclavas                                           Bitcoin

Maypoles                                             Podcasting

Crossbow hunting                               Instagram

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John Walker is a journalist based in New York City who has been covering the rise of “big poetry” for the last two decades. He is a graduate of Middlebury College where he majored in English and wrote his thesis on the intersection of poetry and venture capitalism. His recent articles include: “Writing Poems with Simulated Data: Why, What and How,” and “Poetry Addiction- a Growing Mental Health Crisis?” After years of struggling with his own poetry addiction, John is thankful to be living poetry-free.