WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:03.750 align:middle line:90% I am out of my mind excited. 00:00:03.750 --> 00:00:05.910 align:middle line:90% That's just true. 00:00:05.910 --> 00:00:07.140 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:12.450 align:middle line:84% I was raised Pentecostal in a place called Hixson, Tennessee. 00:00:12.450 --> 00:00:15.310 align:middle line:84% This is just a couple of hours away from Nashville, 00:00:15.310 --> 00:00:18.990 align:middle line:84% which is where one of our readers, Tiana Clark, 00:00:18.990 --> 00:00:23.190 align:middle line:90% spent her childhood and is back. 00:00:23.190 --> 00:00:26.490 align:middle line:84% For those of you who are not familiar with Pentecostal 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:30.480 align:middle line:84% practices, it's not uncommon for us 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:35.880 align:middle line:84% to run up and down the aisles with both excitement and fear, 00:00:35.880 --> 00:00:39.840 align:middle line:84% or to roll around on the floor laughing, crying, 00:00:39.840 --> 00:00:42.660 align:middle line:90% and speaking in tongues. 00:00:42.660 --> 00:00:45.210 align:middle line:84% Even though I was eventually excluded 00:00:45.210 --> 00:00:50.040 align:middle line:84% from these practices because of my trans and queer existence, 00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:52.800 align:middle line:84% the Pentecostal Church is really where I first 00:00:52.800 --> 00:00:58.840 align:middle line:84% understood what language and the body together make possible. 00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:01.620 align:middle line:84% This is something akin to what Alice Walker calls, 00:01:01.620 --> 00:01:05.160 align:middle line:84% quote, "the collective vulnerability of presence," 00:01:05.160 --> 00:01:10.590 align:middle line:84% and of which she says, "we need not be afraid." 00:01:10.590 --> 00:01:15.120 align:middle line:84% All of this is to say trigger warning. 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:16.980 align:middle line:84% I'm no longer religious, but when 00:01:16.980 --> 00:01:20.670 align:middle line:84% it comes to these two authors, Monica Sok and Tiana 00:01:20.670 --> 00:01:26.670 align:middle line:84% Clark, and their work, I feel the charismatic in me rise up. 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:30.390 align:middle line:84% And so the spirit is going to say what the spirit thinks 00:01:30.390 --> 00:01:33.490 align:middle line:90% needs to be said. 00:01:33.490 --> 00:01:36.120 align:middle line:84% Speaking of Alice Walker, in her book, 00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:39.580 align:middle line:84% Anything We Love Can Be Saved, a writer's activism, 00:01:39.580 --> 00:01:45.270 align:middle line:84% which if y'all don't know that book, it's time. 00:01:45.270 --> 00:01:50.130 align:middle line:84% She says, "there is always a moment in any kind of struggle 00:01:50.130 --> 00:01:55.950 align:middle line:84% when one feels in full bloom, vivid, alive. 00:01:55.950 --> 00:01:59.340 align:middle line:84% To be such a person or to witness anyone 00:01:59.340 --> 00:02:02.340 align:middle line:84% at that moment of transcendent presence 00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:08.940 align:middle line:84% is to know that what is human is linked by a daring compassion 00:02:08.940 --> 00:02:11.920 align:middle line:90% to what is divine." 00:02:11.920 --> 00:02:16.240 align:middle line:84% This is exactly how I feel reading both of your work. 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.110 align:middle line:84% And if it is true what Simone Weil says 00:02:19.110 --> 00:02:22.800 align:middle line:84% that absolute unmixed attention is prayer, then 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:27.810 align:middle line:84% these poems, as they face white supremacy anti-Black racism, 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:32.340 align:middle line:84% historical violence, genocide, and its attendant erasures, 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:36.510 align:middle line:84% all with a clarity and lyric muscularity that 00:02:36.510 --> 00:02:39.480 align:middle line:84% is unforgettable, then these poems 00:02:39.480 --> 00:02:41.850 align:middle line:84% are teaching us what it looks like to hold 00:02:41.850 --> 00:02:47.740 align:middle line:84% God and other power-hungry creeps accountable, 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:52.110 align:middle line:84% which is to say they are teaching us how to pray. 00:02:52.110 --> 00:02:56.370 align:middle line:84% Yet this work is not about being fearless, as Monica explains. 00:02:56.370 --> 00:02:59.550 align:middle line:84% It's about making eye contact with power. 00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:03.510 align:middle line:84% It's about, quote, "making an experience visible to those 00:03:03.510 --> 00:03:06.120 align:middle line:90% who treat it as invisible. 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:09.210 align:middle line:84% And it is about moving toward love and tenderness 00:03:09.210 --> 00:03:14.580 align:middle line:84% at the same time as moving towards suffering and pain." 00:03:14.580 --> 00:03:17.230 align:middle line:84% Monica's first book, as we've mentioned, 00:03:17.230 --> 00:03:20.490 align:middle line:84% is available tonight for the first time, is titled A Nail 00:03:20.490 --> 00:03:22.050 align:middle line:90% the Evening Hangs On. 00:03:22.050 --> 00:03:25.290 align:middle line:84% And Tiana's first book, I Can't Talk About the Trees 00:03:25.290 --> 00:03:29.460 align:middle line:84% Without the Blood, is also available after the reading. 00:03:29.460 --> 00:03:32.310 align:middle line:84% From different vantage points and in different but equally 00:03:32.310 --> 00:03:35.070 align:middle line:84% stunning ways, both poets utilize 00:03:35.070 --> 00:03:38.830 align:middle line:84% persona, personal narrative, research, and history. 00:03:38.830 --> 00:03:41.400 align:middle line:84% And while they are both masterful, 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:45.780 align:middle line:84% there is something much more urgent than mastery at stake. 00:03:45.780 --> 00:03:47.970 align:middle line:84% As Tiana says in the Kenyon Review, 00:03:47.970 --> 00:03:50.940 align:middle line:84% I haven't stopped thinking about this idea of catching up 00:03:50.940 --> 00:03:55.620 align:middle line:84% to my own courage, both in my life and on the page. 00:03:55.620 --> 00:03:58.590 align:middle line:84% I stopped caring as much about prestige. 00:03:58.590 --> 00:04:02.340 align:middle line:84% I am writing to save my own life. 00:04:02.340 --> 00:04:04.620 align:middle line:84% Both authors elucidate the effects 00:04:04.620 --> 00:04:07.710 align:middle line:84% of individual and collective trauma while, quote, 00:04:07.710 --> 00:04:11.280 align:middle line:84% "resisting," as Monica says in an interview with the poet Jane 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:14.070 align:middle line:90% Wong, the trauma gaze. 00:04:14.070 --> 00:04:18.029 align:middle line:84% She adds, "I'm going to be subversive. 00:04:18.029 --> 00:04:21.390 align:middle line:84% I'm going to write this poem and say I'm alive 00:04:21.390 --> 00:04:23.400 align:middle line:90% and I made it here. 00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:25.950 align:middle line:84% I want my Cambodian-American community 00:04:25.950 --> 00:04:29.880 align:middle line:84% to know that they are going to be OK." 00:04:29.880 --> 00:04:32.790 align:middle line:84% Monica Sok is a Cambodian-American poet 00:04:32.790 --> 00:04:35.220 align:middle line:84% and the daughter of former refugees. 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:37.950 align:middle line:84% She's the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On, 00:04:37.950 --> 00:04:40.260 align:middle line:90% out from Copper Canyon Press. 00:04:40.260 --> 00:04:42.840 align:middle line:84% Her work has been recognized with the Discovery Prize 00:04:42.840 --> 00:04:45.210 align:middle line:90% from 92Y. 00:04:45.210 --> 00:04:48.210 align:middle line:84% She has received fellowships and residencies. 00:04:48.210 --> 00:04:51.040 align:middle line:84% There's a long list here, which I love-- 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:52.995 align:middle line:90% it's like, yes-- more! 00:04:52.995 --> 00:04:55.770 align:middle line:90% 00:04:55.770 --> 00:04:59.370 align:middle line:84% She's currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. 00:04:59.370 --> 00:05:03.730 align:middle line:84% And she's a originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 00:05:03.730 --> 00:05:06.040 align:middle line:84% Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:09.010 align:middle line:84% I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, University 00:05:09.010 --> 00:05:13.900 align:middle line:84% of Pittsburgh Press, 2018, which was also the winner of the 2017 00:05:13.900 --> 00:05:16.000 align:middle line:90% Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:20.710 align:middle line:84% And "Equilibrium," Bowl City Press 2016, 00:05:20.710 --> 00:05:25.600 align:middle line:84% selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:28.480 align:middle line:90% Chapbook Competition. 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:33.160 align:middle line:84% Clark is a finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery 00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:38.830 align:middle line:84% Award, which we're going to find out about and like a week. 00:05:38.830 --> 00:05:42.610 align:middle line:90% So February 22, all the energy-- 00:05:42.610 --> 00:05:43.510 align:middle line:90% it's right there. 00:05:43.510 --> 00:05:44.290 align:middle line:90% It's right there. 00:05:44.290 --> 00:05:47.330 align:middle line:90% 00:05:47.330 --> 00:05:50.210 align:middle line:90% She's published in 1,000 places. 00:05:50.210 --> 00:05:50.915 align:middle line:90% She's amazing. 00:05:50.915 --> 00:05:53.540 align:middle line:84% And what I really want to say is to please join me 00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:56.870 align:middle line:84% in celebrating our luck in witnessing these two 00:05:56.870 --> 00:06:01.040 align:middle line:84% poets, their transcendent presences and voice 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:02.750 align:middle line:90% and on the page. 00:06:02.750 --> 00:06:06.700 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]