An hour of poems in a language other than English – this is the concept of Poetry Without Borders, a college-wide event that has been celebrated at Carleton since 2016.
Founded at Carleton by German professor Juliane Schicker, Poetry Without Borders brings together people who care about the world and speak/read languages other than English. Prof. Schicker encountered the event during her Ph.D. studies at Penn State. She co-organized it there with her colleague, now German Professor Lauren Brooks, who had brought this event from her previous institution, CalState Long Beach and took it to her next, NC State. Now, Poetry without Borders is a Northfield tradition on both sides of the river because German Professor Nora Vosburg, also a Penn State Ph.D. alumna, brought the tradition to St. Olaf as well. Poetry Without Borders breaks down borders in so many ways!
At Carleton, the event started out as a faculty-led and student-run endeavor in the German Department, and is now coordinated by the Carleton Language Center under the Leadership of the Language Center Director Amy Hutchinson and her team as well as an advisory board made up of faculty from many language departments at Carleton. The event invites everyone – students, faculty, staff, and community members – to read and listen to poems in languages other than English. Feeling the dominance of English almost everywhere around us, this hour of other languages is a welcome break and an ephemeral door into different minds, dialects, cultures, and feelings.
In 2025, 77 participants read 36 poems in 17 languages, including Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Jopara, Kazakh, Louisiana French, Portuguese, Quechua, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Yiddish. The English translations are always being projected on a screen to read along, but many audience members let the sound tell the story.
Join us next spring if you have something to say about the state of the world in a language other than English!
by Juliane Schicker
Photo Credit Adam Rothman ’25.
