Hello and welcome.
My name is Renee Angle.
I'm the program coordinator here at the Poetry Center
and I'd like to welcome you tonight to the Mary Ann Campau
Fellowship Reading, featuring this year's
recipient, Liza Porter.
[APPLAUSE]
Before we get started I'm going to make
some brief announcements.
On Thursday-- about upcoming events here at the Center--
on Thursday, April 1 at 5:30 PM, Annie Guthrie
will lead a closer look book club discussion of Samedi
the Deafness, by Jesse Ball.
You can purchase a copy at the front desk
if you'd like to join in the conversation on April 1st.
Tuesday, March 30 at 6:00 PM, um, the next event
in Unsettling Certainties Conversations in the Humanities
series will be central productions, pictures, poems,
and performances.
It takes place at the Poetry Center here
and it will be a multimedia panel of scholars
and performance artists who explore visual, sonic,
and embodied landscapes to consider
the ways in which cultural practices may be understood.
The Mary Ann Campau--
Memorial Fellowship for Southern Arizona poets
recognizes talented writers who strengthen and inspire
our literary landscape.
I would like to take a moment to thank the friends of the Mary
Ann Campau who helped to make this fellowship possible.
In addition to the stewardship of Pam--
Pamela Uschuk Bill Root, and Toni Lieberman.
A resident of Tucson for 40 years, Mary Ann Campau
was a devoted supporter of poetry and poets
in our community.
She was a well-loved and much loved
public school teacher who retired in 1989 when
she began to take workshops at the Poetry Center
with Richard Siken and Richard Shelton.
And then through the Writing Work Center
with William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk.
These workshops sparked a passion
for poetry and a dedication to her local poetry community.
Mary Ann hosted writing classes with guest poets
in her own home, provided grants to writers who could not
otherwise afford to attend these,
and she attended, supported, and participated
in numerous local reading series.
And through her own enthusiasm she
cultivated new audiences for poetry.
Her poems were published in local journals including
Sand Cutters and the Tucson Poet,
and in 2001 she published a full length
collection of her own poetry, Like a Water Weed Ghost.
We're so pleased that this year Liza Porter
has received this fellowship.