And it's my pleasure to introduce the library director
here at the Poetry Center, the wonderful Wendy Burk who
will tell us a little bit more about Giancarlo
and then turn things over to him.
Please help me welcome Wendy Burk.
Hello, everyone.
Thank you so much for being here.
So this fall, when I arrive at the Poetry Center,
and when I head home for the day,
I take time in the morning and in the evening to look closely
at the joyous, rebellious, angry, meditative,
melancholy works that you see here, works of contemporary,
Peruvian, avant garde poetry and art exhibited together
for the first time in Birú Pirú Perú.
And what I find myself thinking about
is how much I'd like to be in a conversation
with the poets and artists such as Cristians Luna, Tilsa Otta,
and the Anima Lisa collective.
If you haven't seen the Anima Lisa collective,
make sure you go into the corridor
and check out the amazing video work displayed there.
But we're really lucky tonight because we
do get to be in that conversation thanks
to Giancarlo Huapaya, the curator
of this magnificent exhibit and an important member
of the community of writers and artists
whose work is gathered in this exhibit.
So he's a scholar of this work, he's a publisher of the work,
and he's a creator of the work.
He's born in Lima, residing in Phoenix,
author of the books "Estado y Contemplación",
"Canción de Canción se Gana", "Polisexual"
and "Taller Sub Verso".
And he's also the editor of the anthology Pulenta Pool:
Peruvian poets in the United States, which
was published by Hostos Review.
As a curator of visual poetry, he
has presented exhibitions in Mexico City
and in San Francisco.
And previously, he was the advisor of the editorial
and music industry policies of cultural industries in Lima
and was the director of the Lima Poetry Festival
during its first three years.
He is also founder and editor of Cardboard House Press,
a non-profit publishing house for Latin American
and Spanish literature and translation, one
of the many amazing small presses working in Phoenix
for whom I have so much admiration.
And you can see and buy these books here tonight.
And I guarantee that you'll find them breathtaking in their form
and important and thought-provoking
in their content.
So please do go visit Kurt and Janet right over there
at that table and check out that amazing work.
We asked Giancarlo to describe his performance tonight.
And he gave a really wonderful answer
that I'm going to repeat to you just because I
want to say it out loud myself.
He said, I'm going to create a sound and visual piece
with populist discourses from the noisiest political scene
in the world.
[LAUGHTER]
So I hope you're as excited as I am to experience the noise
and get to be a part of this conversation.
Let's all welcome Giancarlo Huapaya.