Hey, thanks, everybody.
So it's an honor and actually a great pleasure
to be able to be here tonight and give
this introduction to a poet who happens to be
one of my personal favorites.
And to be able to do this right, I'm
of course obliged to mention some
of Mr. Bonair-Agard's accomplishments and accolades
of which there are many.
He's a professional poet, teacher, lecturer, Cave Canem
fellow, and author of three poetry collections including
"Gully," which as you heard at long last is finally
available in the United States here tonight, so check it out.
He's also the co-founder and artistic director
of Louder Arts in New York City, which
is a project that for more than a decade has produced events,
workshops, fostering some of the finest work
to come out of the NYC underground,
and increasingly, I guess you'd call it the "above ground."
Mr. Bonair-Agard has been involved in the poetry slam
movement for more years than he would
want me to mention, competing and winning across the country.
Currently, he has set up shop in Chicago
where he's the poet in residence, the Young Chicago
Authors, and also teaches at Fordham University and the Cook
County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.
And while I don't really want to make
light of these accomplishments, I'm
glad to be finished listing them.
For by and large, they make up what I consider
to be the poets day job.
That is they belong to what E.E. Cummings called "The Measurable
House of Being."
And along with Cummings, I'm more
interested in what he calls--
"The Miserable House of Doing."
And together with him, I'm more interested in what
he called "The Immeasurable House of Being."
Where the true poet, like Mr. Bonair-Agard
takes up residence.
As I read and listened to Roger's poetry,
there's a saying, a dicho that comes to mind.
"Nadie es profeta en su tierra."
"No one is a prophet in their own homeland."
throughout his work, there is evidence
of the sharpened perception that can only
come from border crossing.
From leaving the familiar and journeying out into the other,
whatever that other may be.
And we can interpret this literally and speak
of Roger's emigration from the native Trinidad and Tobago
to the urban landscape of Brooklyn,
and the richness inherent in the cultural mashup
of these places that is the fertile soil from which so
much of his work grows out of.
The house of being becomes less measurable,
and I would say more revolutionary
when that house has its foundations poured
in multiple lands.
And yet for me to speak only of Roger's work
in the context of specific cultural reference,
would be to sell it short.
I'm sure what you'll hear tonight is much more
interesting than any surface interpretation
I could give of it.
So in closing, I'd like to go just a bit deeper.
And say that when I speak of "La Tierra del
Profeta, The Homeland of the Prophet,"
I don't mean to speak only literally.
The themes in Roger's work address something yet larger.
Movement, which is the story of our time,
the story of all human times.
Yes, from an island to the mixed waters of Brooklyn,
but also from the page to stage, and back again.
From racial inclusion to violent exclusion.
From the streets of the ghetto to the halls of the Academy.
From competition to the classroom, and back again.
From the ostensibly oppressed to the literary liberator.
From the colony to obvious imperial power.
From wry irreverence to stoic reality.
From the New York Spoken Word Community
to the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
This is just some of the movement fluidity
and deftness held in Roger's work.
Willing or not, he comes to us as an ambassador
of these territories, just as each ambassador
is an ambassador of his or her own empire.
Each poet and ambassador of his or her own empire
of his or her own experience.
Throughout it all, Roger maintains a radical beingness,
and we are lucky that he can be with us here tonight.
Without further ado, please help me
welcome the poet and my friend, Mr. Roger Bonair-Agard.