“Where will meanings be when the words are forgotten?” asks W. S. Merwin in Language Matters with Bob Holman. Merwin’s question addresses the thousands of languages that are under threat of extinction. According to the film, “There are over 6,000 languages in the whole world. We lose one every two weeks. … By the end of this century, half of the world’s languages will have vanished.” In this documentary, slam poet Bob Holman and director/producer/writer David Grubin travel to Australia, Wales, and Hawaii to reveal stories about endangered languages and the attempts to preserve them.

Winner of the Grand Festival Award for Documentary at the 2014 Berkeley Video and Film Festival, Language Matters with Bob Holman will premiere on channel THIRTEEN in New York on Sunday, January 25, at 12:30 p.m. For more information, visit the Language Matters website. For more on Holmon's global journey exploring endangered languages, watch his talk from the Poets Forum 2014 "Endangered Languages and Texts" panel with Ammiel Alcalay in the video below.