The Poet's Almanac a Weather Inspired Poetry App
The Poet’s Almanac bridges the divide between a humdrum weather report and a book of poetry. By using meteorological information and a customized library of poems, the application is able to provide poetry based on the weather. Matthew Murrey’s “First Song” heralds a rainy day, and an afternoon of San Francisco fog invites the reader to enjoy the words of Sally Fisher. All of the poems have been handpicked by the staff at Poetry East from the journal’s archives and attributed with a temperature and weather type.
• A collection of 200+ poems and growing that correlate to the day’s weather forecast. • Like and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for updates on the growing library and daily poetry forecasts • Read through the collection using a traditional index • Use The Poet’s Almanac anywhere in the worldGeneral Information
Project Role
Designer, developer, and project manager
Downloads Views
Over 7K downloads on iOS and Android
Tech Stack
Corona SDK, XCode, LUA, PHP, MySQL
Funding Source or Client
Poetry East and DePaul University
Publications
0
Still Available
Yes on iOS
The Process
I worked with the editorial board of Poetry East to give each poem in their Seasons issue a weather type and temperature.
Together with the board, we designed a series of different screens that connected the concept of the almanac to poetry and literature. At the end of the process, we opted for solid colors intead of background images to make it clearer for readers.
Press on the Poet's Almanac
O, The Oprah Magazine
We Predict that lovers of verse with a penchant for new technology will be enamored of The Poet’s Almanac
Tuesdays with Story
Today’s weather forecast had a lovely poem about Pablo Casals!
New Pages
This unique app analyzes the weather report and couples it with Poetry East's customized archive to create a new way for users to discover and engage with poetry every day. All of the poems have been handpicked by the staff at Poetry East and graduate students, as well as faculty, at DePaul University have attributed to each a temperature and weather type.
Chatham University Library
The Poet’s Almanac, created by the journal Poetry East at DePaul University in Chicago, matches a poem published in its pages to the current weather in your location using GPS and meteorological data.[...] Although the selection is limited to poems already published by Poetry East, I find myself checking the app regularly to see what poems are selected on rainy days or when it’s particularly sunny.