In this video from the 2015 Poets Forum, Chancellors Khaled Mattawa and Naomi Shihab Nye discuss the importance of engaging with voices from around the world.

According to Naomi Shihab Nye, “Our big unspoken secret is that we’re really ignorant about what people are writing everywhere else. And we need to do more work, and we need to do it all the time. We need to be curious; we need to keep seeking out voices who really represent the spirits of their country more than the information we get.”

In their conversation, Mattawa and Nye list their favorite international poets and examine how education, translation, and online resources affect access to international poetry.