The Alcheringa Collection spans the entire history of the magazine, including approximately 100 manuscript items representing a broad range of the poetry, articles, and reviews that were published; approximately 200 letters and 46 postcards from internationally known poets, anthropologists and folklorists including Michael Corr, Robert Creeley, Ted Enslin, Jerome Rothenberg, Gary Snyder, Nathaniel Tarn, and Dennis Tedlock; approximately 1,219 items of business records including subscription lists, permissions, budget reports, advertising information, copyrights, requisitions, correspondence with other magazines, and other related documents; and miscellaneous photographs and peripherals.

Records from the UB Student Poetry Prizes, which include the Academy of American Poets Prize, Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize, and the Dan Liberthson Poetry Prize.

The Carolyn Stoloff Collection contains typed and autograph manuscripts, many with numerous handwritten corrections, for over a dozen individual poems; publicity, reviews, and correspondence for (1971); correspondence to and from individuals such as Sonya Dorman Hess, and to and from little magazines and literary journals including , , and dozens more.

The Contemporary Manuscripts Collection contains a total of thousands of pages of manuscripts and/or correspondence from hundreds of poets and writers such as Lascelles Abercrombie, W. H. Auden, David Gascoyne, Elizabeth Jennings, Hugh MacDiarmid, Thomas Merton, Charlotte Mew, Ezra Pound, Alastair Reid, Peter Russell, Winfield Townley Scott, Genevieve Taggard, Ruthven Todd, Henry Treece, and Louis Zukofsky.

Poet, filmmaker, and playwright James Richard Broughton (1913-1999) grew up in San Francisco and was educated at Stanford University. Alongside poets Kenneth Rexroth and Robert Duncan, he was a member of the San Francisco Renaissance movement. Hamilton and Mary Tyler befriended many writers, and were long time friends of Robert Duncan. This small file contains two letters to the Tylers (1962), two TMsS, and an inscribed broadside.

Helen Adam (1909-1993) was a poet and visual artist of the San Francisco Renaissance. Born in Scotland, she garnered acclaim at a young age for her collection of poems titled The Elfin Peddlar. After attending Edinburgh University for two years Helen and her sister and frequent collaborator Pat Adam worked as journalists in London before moving to the United States with their mother in 1939. The family made their way to San Francisco, at the beginning of what would become the San Francisco Renaissance. Here her artistic career flourished, and she published a number of poetic and visual works. Following the success of her play San Francisco's Burning, the sisters moved to New York City where they remained for the rest of their lives. The material in the Helen Adam Collection contains over 100 collages, 119 scrapbooks, manuscripts for several books of poetry and individual poems as well as production material from Adam's dramatic work such as San Francisco's Burning and Daydream of Darkness. Also included are personal documents, artwork, and ephemera.

The Helen Luster Collection contains manuscripts for her nine published books and unpublished manuscripts; correspondence between poets, scientists, science fiction writers, and parapsychologists; material related to her personal and professional relationship with Allen Ginsberg including manuscripts documenting their correspondence and a long poem; notes and documentation of her professional work including founder and president of Los Angeles Poetry Center, readings, and parapsychology involvement; research files on various inspiration for her books and writing; psychic dream journals and paranormal event documentation; photographs; journals, notes, poetry, and coursework from various institutions from New York to San Francisco with the majority being from Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. Elizabeth Chandler (Betty Luster), Helen's sister, and Donna Allan have small files of creative work and estate records near the end of the collection.

The James Laughlin Collection contains typescripts and autograph manuscripts, many with corrections, for approximately 835 poems; and 39 letters from Laughlin to individuals such as Charles D. Abbott, Peter Russell, and Robert Bertholf.

The kari edwards papers comprises approximately 4.6 gigabytes of digital content (approximately 3300 files) and 9.88 linear feet of paper materials and art objects. The bulk of the digital files can be described as born digital; content originating in a computer environment. These files consist of drafts of edwards' published works of poetry, drafts of unpublished works, images of cover art for works, reviews of edwards' poetry, syllabi and letters to publishers. The collection also contains a significant number of digital images, including born digital images and other images that are digital surrogates of print photographs. The bulk of the digital images were taken during travel to various parts of India including Auroville, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mamallapuram, and Varanasi between 2004 and 2006. The physical records include notebooks, manuscripts, ephemera, clippings, official documents, unique publications, photographs, artworks on paper and canvas.

The Kavyayantra Collection contains materials from the Kavyayantra Press including letterpress proofs, galleys, broadsides, and book covers, created both independently and in letterpress courses at Naropa University, and featuring the work of poets associated with Naropa.