Hi.
Thank you so much.
That was wonderful.
And it's lovely to see you all on a summer night for a poetry
reading.
And it's such a pleasure for me--
I'm Susan Briante, by the way.
I teach here at the University-- to introduce
my newest colleague, the poet Bojan Louis.
Sherwin Bitsui calls Bojan Louis' award-winning debut
collection Currents 'a multilingual ceremony
of electricity, Earth, and memory."
The reference to electricity is apt in a number of levels,
not least of all because, in that last poem we heard,
he mentioned we are made almost entirely of water
and electricity.
So there is definitely a cross current,
if I can go there, happening tonight.
But I digress.
Louis is an expert craftsman of image in moment
here in America, as well as here in Arizona,
where as a member of the Navajo Nation,
Louis can testify to the terrible legacies of genocide,
racism, and environmental degradation,
as well as the promise of the alternative
that, as the poet Fred Moten reminds us,
is always already there.
It's from this perspective, from this grounding,
that Louis' considerable intelligence, insight,
and imagination unfurls.
Currents takes as its source text the Diné Bahane', the King
James Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Satanic Bible,
and Hakim Bey's T.A.Z.--
The Temporary Autonomous Zone.
Ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism.
The book includes first-person narratives as well as
persona poems that take the perspectives
of an Alaskan construction worker,
Spanish-speaking migrants, even Maricopa's own former sheriff
Joe Arpaio.
But Bitsui's call to electricity of the book
is significant because Louis also draws on his experience
as an electrician, training that winds through his poems
and his poetics.
In a grad class, he taught at U of A in February.
He addressed this, talking about how he found the three
wires that you might see if you pulled apart any outlet.
Hot, white, and neutral.
Did I get that right, more or less?
Hot, ground.
Hot, ground, and neutral.
Right.
Hot, ground, and neutral--
a kind of metaphor for his own poetics.
And you see it in his work.
Much of his writing is done in tercets,
and there are three languages that wind their way
through the collection--
Diné Bizaad, Spanish, and English,
none of them neutral or natural, as he reminds us.
Answering an interviewer's question
about the function of this multilingualism,
Lewis explains, quote, "the function
is the future, maybe not of language in its entirety,
but certainly a prefiguring of my future.
I dream of my child or children being trilingual.
I'm writing to address my future offspring,
and to remind myself that this multilingual reality is
possible, no matter how incredibly impossible
it feels."
The alternative is always already here.
In one particularly stunning tercet, Bojan writes,
"este no es mi idioma--" neither is this--
and ends with a phrase in Diné Bizaad which translates
to "and not this."
Perhaps this is true, but what is also true
is that Louis writes in the language of poetry--
the language of music, truth, beauty, and energy.
We're so lucky to have him join the creative writing
program here, and so lucky to have him here tonight.
Join me in welcoming Bojan Louis.
[APPLAUSE]