WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:01.710 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:01.710 --> 00:00:03.143 align:middle line:90% Hi, everybody. 00:00:03.143 --> 00:00:03.810 align:middle line:90% This is amazing. 00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:06.630 align:middle line:84% Tucson comes out to hear people talk about poetry, 00:00:06.630 --> 00:00:08.260 align:middle line:90% which is just incredible. 00:00:08.260 --> 00:00:09.660 align:middle line:90% I love Tucson. 00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:11.280 align:middle line:90% And I love the Poetry Center. 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:13.470 align:middle line:90% Support them! 00:00:13.470 --> 00:00:15.510 align:middle line:90% Anyway. 00:00:15.510 --> 00:00:18.385 align:middle line:84% I'm happy to be here and happy to introduce Thomas Sayers 00:00:18.385 --> 00:00:18.885 align:middle line:90% Ellis. 00:00:18.885 --> 00:00:21.470 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.470 --> 00:00:24.010 align:middle line:90% Who is the roving poet? 00:00:24.010 --> 00:00:25.990 align:middle line:84% Who is the photographer who sees? 00:00:25.990 --> 00:00:29.590 align:middle line:84% Who and what determines how we see? 00:00:29.590 --> 00:00:32.439 align:middle line:84% As human beings, even for a moment on this planet, even yet 00:00:32.439 --> 00:00:34.450 align:middle line:84% unborn, but hearing our mother's heartbeats, 00:00:34.450 --> 00:00:38.530 align:middle line:84% the muffled conversations and outside our warm internal bath, 00:00:38.530 --> 00:00:42.010 align:middle line:84% and the protective skin keeping us yet from the world, 00:00:42.010 --> 00:00:45.430 align:middle line:84% we hardly begin before our understanding of the world 00:00:45.430 --> 00:00:48.550 align:middle line:84% is an accumulation of experience, of influence, 00:00:48.550 --> 00:00:51.670 align:middle line:84% of connection, a mass of reaction. 00:00:51.670 --> 00:00:55.240 align:middle line:84% We poets, humans, we babies who are feeling, 00:00:55.240 --> 00:00:57.910 align:middle line:84% hearing, seeing, touching the world for the first time, 00:00:57.910 --> 00:01:00.640 align:middle line:84% we are hearing the voices of our mothers, 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:02.560 align:middle line:90% the songs of our grandfathers. 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:05.680 align:middle line:84% We, the planets and the news and a morning cartoon 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:07.420 align:middle line:90% or a voice on the TV. 00:01:07.420 --> 00:01:10.930 align:middle line:84% The first words of our sisters, the apple, that is an apple, 00:01:10.930 --> 00:01:13.660 align:middle line:84% in our mouths, and our mouths forming language, 00:01:13.660 --> 00:01:15.730 align:middle line:90% a red ball in the sun. 00:01:15.730 --> 00:01:18.370 align:middle line:84% What do we grab in our hearts as we listen? 00:01:18.370 --> 00:01:20.440 align:middle line:90% What do we put into the world? 00:01:20.440 --> 00:01:23.290 align:middle line:84% What and who are the captured, and who 00:01:23.290 --> 00:01:25.690 align:middle line:90% is the one who captures? 00:01:25.690 --> 00:01:29.140 align:middle line:84% Thomas Sayers Ellis, poet and photographer, musician 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:33.460 align:middle line:84% and critic, is asking this of himself every day. 00:01:33.460 --> 00:01:35.410 align:middle line:84% Earlier this week, Thomas and I spent a day 00:01:35.410 --> 00:01:37.480 align:middle line:84% on the streets of Tucson photographing, 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:39.520 align:middle line:84% or should I say looking, or should I 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:41.920 align:middle line:84% say, watching Thomas in the middle of South Six 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:44.650 align:middle line:84% running out in the middle of traffic to get a shot of a man 00:01:44.650 --> 00:01:48.520 align:middle line:84% on a lift, high up on the trunk of a palm tree. 00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:51.820 align:middle line:84% We went to San Javier del Bac and to El Rio Bakery 00:01:51.820 --> 00:01:54.970 align:middle line:84% and Pat's on Grande, the Salvation Army, and St Vincent 00:01:54.970 --> 00:01:56.020 align:middle line:90% de Paul. 00:01:56.020 --> 00:01:58.840 align:middle line:84% Food city, where a manager told Thomas that he could not take 00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:01.360 align:middle line:84% photographs but never stopped me. 00:02:01.360 --> 00:02:04.780 align:middle line:84% Was I just not caught or it was Thomas caught being Black? 00:02:04.780 --> 00:02:06.280 align:middle line:90% Hard to say. 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:08.440 align:middle line:84% But I do know that watching someone 00:02:08.440 --> 00:02:09.910 align:middle line:84% in the act of taking a photograph 00:02:09.910 --> 00:02:12.490 align:middle line:84% reveals something more about an artist than watching 00:02:12.490 --> 00:02:14.140 align:middle line:90% a poet write. 00:02:14.140 --> 00:02:17.530 align:middle line:84% After all, what do you see when the poet writes? 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:20.410 align:middle line:84% Can you really see what their silent eye lights 00:02:20.410 --> 00:02:23.770 align:middle line:84% on, the connections made, the wild and trafficked streets 00:02:23.770 --> 00:02:25.010 align:middle line:90% of the mind? 00:02:25.010 --> 00:02:25.870 align:middle line:90% No. 00:02:25.870 --> 00:02:29.200 align:middle line:84% We only visit the residue of making somewhere in the written 00:02:29.200 --> 00:02:30.790 align:middle line:90% artifact. 00:02:30.790 --> 00:02:33.520 align:middle line:84% But watching Thomas in motion, I had the opportunity 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:36.550 align:middle line:84% to watch a mind in motion, the eyes that follows, 00:02:36.550 --> 00:02:38.890 align:middle line:84% the unthinking connections of making. 00:02:38.890 --> 00:02:40.510 align:middle line:90% That day was a privilege. 00:02:40.510 --> 00:02:43.480 align:middle line:84% You now have the privilege to hear that mind, ever quick, 00:02:43.480 --> 00:02:45.370 align:middle line:84% ever in the middle of traffic, ever 00:02:45.370 --> 00:02:47.800 align:middle line:84% concerned with showing what is not foreseen 00:02:47.800 --> 00:02:49.578 align:middle line:84% and what makes us the artists that we are. 00:02:49.578 --> 00:02:51.370 align:middle line:84% Please help me welcome Thomas Sayers Ellis. 00:02:51.370 --> 00:02:53.220 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]