WEBVTT

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Hi.

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(MULTIPLE VOICES) Hi.

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How are you?

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All right.

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Yes.

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Good.

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Thank you so much
for being here.

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This is one of my favorite
places on the planet.

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I can't believe that all
those poetry collections

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are right over there.

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[CHUCKLES]

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This place is such an
important part of the fact

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that we support and encourage
creative writing and poetry

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to be heard and listened
to in this world,

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at a time where we
need it the most.

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I want to say, from
the get go, that it

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was an incredible
pleasure and honor

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to be asked to do this project.

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And I, immediately, said,
yes, and then I was terrified.

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I thought-- what did I just do?

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And how do I get into the poems?

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And how do I really
connect with the work

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in a way that is my own?

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In a way that is not polemical.

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In a way that it stays
true to the idea of what

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we're doing in this country--
in terms of mass incarceration--

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and stays true to the
personal behind it.

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And it came to me that--

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I travel, extensively,
in Latin America.

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And they talk a lot about
the disappearing people,

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especially during
the Pinochet regime,

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both in Chile and in Argentina.

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And I kept thinking, oh,
that's what we're doing.

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We're disappearing people.

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And we don't talk
about it that way

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because we are doing it now.

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And so what I decided
to do was write

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poems that are from the
perspective of the person who

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is left.

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Because, I think,
what we often forget

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is that it's not just the
incarcerated person's life who

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is changed forever, but
their families and the people

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they leave behind.

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And how do you grieve when
someone is gone but not gone?

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So these are 20 new poems.

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I've never read them out loud.

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I mean, I've read
them out loud--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--but not to you all,
not to folks in the room,

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aside from my dog.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I am never nervous
for a poetry reading.

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I just never am.

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I don't know why.

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I never have been.

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But I'm nervous right now.

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And I think it's because--

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A, it's new work.

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And, B, it has been one of
the most important projects

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I've worked on in
the last three years.

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So I'm just going to dive in.

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