In 2004, Willie Ney brought a team of high school students from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival in Los Angeles. Ney, who was working in an outreach capacity for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was enthralled by the creativity, talent, and passion that he witnessed, calling it a “transformative experience.” But he was also struck by the realization that he was the only university-level representative in attendance. “There was no integration of higher education with these students, who were brilliant writers and thinkers,” he said. “There are thousands of poets out there, but universities are not recruiting them. They?re recruiting athletes.”
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