On May 18th, 2022, Dr. Choman Hardi met with fourteen IB English Language and Literature students from the International School of Curitiba in Curitiba, Brazil. The students were studying her first poetry collection Life For Us (Bloodaxe 2004) as part of their course and were excited for the opportunity to meet Dr. Choman over Zoom. After performing a few poems for the class, Dr. Choman fielded student questions about her process as a writer, her advice to young poets, and how her personal and cultural context informs the meaning of her poetry. After the event, the students reported not just a greater appreciation of poetry, but also of their responsibility in helping to build a better, more equitable global society.
Image description: Both photos are stills from a Zoom meeting, and show adult students seated in a classroom with one blue and one white wall and the inset of a woman with dark curly hair, wearing a green jacket over a black blouse. In one photo, we see seven students—four men and three woman—at their desks, most with laptops open. In the other photo, we see nine students—four women and five men, three of whom are giving “thumbs up” and one who is eating a meal.