WEBVTT

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Hi.

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Thank you so much.

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That was wonderful.

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And it's lovely to see you all
on a summer night for a poetry

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reading.

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And it's such a
pleasure for me--

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I'm Susan Briante, by the way.

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I teach here at the
University-- to introduce

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my newest colleague,
the poet Bojan Louis.

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Sherwin Bitsui calls Bojan
Louis' award-winning debut

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collection Currents 'a
multilingual ceremony

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of electricity,
Earth, and memory."

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The reference to electricity
is apt in a number of levels,

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not least of all because,
in that last poem we heard,

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he mentioned we are made
almost entirely of water

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and electricity.

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So there is definitely
a cross current,

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if I can go there,
happening tonight.

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But I digress.

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Louis is an expert
craftsman of image in moment

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here in America, as
well as here in Arizona,

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where as a member of
the Navajo Nation,

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Louis can testify to the
terrible legacies of genocide,

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racism, and environmental
degradation,

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as well as the promise
of the alternative

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that, as the poet
Fred Moten reminds us,

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is always already there.

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It's from this perspective,
from this grounding,

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that Louis' considerable
intelligence, insight,

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and imagination unfurls.

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Currents takes as its source
text the Diné Bahane', the King

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James Bible, the Book of
Mormon, the Satanic Bible,

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and Hakim Bey's T.A.Z.--

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The Temporary Autonomous Zone.

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Ontological anarchy,
poetic terrorism.

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The book includes first-person
narratives as well as

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persona poems that
take the perspectives

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of an Alaskan
construction worker,

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Spanish-speaking migrants, even
Maricopa's own former sheriff

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Joe Arpaio.

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But Bitsui's call to
electricity of the book

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is significant because Louis
also draws on his experience

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as an electrician, training
that winds through his poems

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and his poetics.

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In a grad class, he taught
at U of A in February.

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He addressed this, talking
about how he found the three

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wires that you might see if
you pulled apart any outlet.

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Hot, white, and neutral.

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Did I get that
right, more or less?

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Hot, ground.

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Hot, ground, and neutral.

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Right.

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Hot, ground, and neutral--

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a kind of metaphor
for his own poetics.

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And you see it in his work.

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Much of his writing
is done in tercets,

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and there are three
languages that wind their way

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through the collection--

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Diné Bizaad,
Spanish, and English,

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none of them neutral or
natural, as he reminds us.

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Answering an
interviewer's question

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about the function of
this multilingualism,

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Lewis explains,
quote, "the function

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is the future, maybe not of
language in its entirety,

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but certainly a
prefiguring of my future.

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I dream of my child or
children being trilingual.

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I'm writing to address
my future offspring,

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and to remind myself that
this multilingual reality is

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possible, no matter how
incredibly impossible

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it feels."

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The alternative is
always already here.

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In one particularly stunning
tercet, Bojan writes,

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"este no es mi idioma--" neither is this--

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and ends with a phrase in
Diné Bizaad which translates

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to "and not this."

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Perhaps this is true,
but what is also true

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is that Louis writes in
the language of poetry--

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the language of music,
truth, beauty, and energy.

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We're so lucky to have him
join the creative writing

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program here, and so lucky
to have him here tonight.

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Join me in welcoming
Bojan Louis.

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[APPLAUSE]

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