poetrylock

PoetryLock is a proposed open standard and software ecosystem for encoding, preserving, and distributing poetry with precise edition metadata and typography. The aim is to enable reproducible rendering across platforms and accurate scholarly citation by binding the poem’s content to its edition history, including lineation, stanza structure, punctuation, and page layout.

The PoetryLock format combines a machine-readable content encoding with rich metadata. The content encoding marks line breaks, stanza boundaries, and page-level features, while metadata records the work, author, translator, editor, publication date, edition description, licensing, and provenance. A lock object may include checksums or digital signatures to verify integrity and a version history to track changes across editions. Interoperability is supported via mappings to existing standards such as TEI-XML and JSON-LD.

Tools in the PoetryLock ecosystem provide editors, validators, and converters. Reference implementations exist in multiple programming languages, and libraries or publishers can integrate PoetryLock into digitized collections, scholarly editions, and citation workflows. The format is designed to handle long digital editions, annotations, and multilingual layers, while remaining straightforward for fixed-text poetry and clearly defined editions.

PoetryLock remains a conceptual framework and is not yet universally adopted; its success depends on community governance, tooling maturity, and alignment with related digital edition standards. Related concepts include TEI, digital editions, and reproducible research practices.