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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you so much, you all.

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I'm so happy to welcome tonight,
for writers whose work I admire

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so much, Renee Angle, Judith
Goldman, Bhanu Kapil and Laura

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Mullen, to come and
celebrate this anthology.

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And some additional
thanks are in order.

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I really want to think
the Poetry Center so much

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for hosting this
event, for hosting

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the symposium that
was the beginning

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of the idea for this book.

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I'd like to think Casa Libre
for really helping me spearhead

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fundraising for this event--

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thank you so much.

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I want to thank
Poets and Writers

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for a grant helping to support
our writers being here.

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And I also want to thank
individual donors who

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helped bring the
writers here today,

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including Andrea and
Alan, Simmons Bunton, Lisa

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Cooper, Ander Monson, Kristi
Maxwell, and TC Tolbert.

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Thank you so much
for your generosity.

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The order of the
evening is that we'll

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be proceeding alphabetically.

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And I wanted to just
take a moment too,

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to thank our
introducers for tonight.

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Michael Rerick will be
introducing Renee Angle.

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Michael Rerick
teaches in Tucson,

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and is the author of In Ways
Impossible to Fold and X-ray.

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Joshua Marie Wilkinson will
be introducing Judith Goldman,

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and Joshua teaches poetry
here at University of Arizona

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and is author of two
forthcoming books,

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Swamp Isthmus from Black Ocean
and the Lorrey's and Archi--

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sorry.

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I botched that.

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The Courier's Archive
and Hymnal from Sidebrow.

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And then we'll
take a short break.

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I'll be introducing Bhanu
Kapil and TC Tolbert

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will be introducing
Laura Mullen.

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TC's Assistant Director of
Casa Libre and his books

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include Territories of
Folding from Kore Press,

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and forthcoming is Gephyromania.

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Did I get that right?

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OK.

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Really short introduction
to the anthology.

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"To work mine end
upon their senses

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that this airy charm is
for, I'll break my staff,

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bury it certain
fathoms in the Earth,

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and deeper than did ever plummet
sound, I'll drown my book."

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Which, of course,
is from The Tempest.

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Looking for a title
for this collection,

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I turned first to the
work of Bernadette Mayer,

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and found in her collection
the Desires of Mothers

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to Please Others in Letters,
the title, I'll Drown My Book.

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The process of opening Mayer
to find Shakespeare reframed

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seems particularly
fitting in the sense

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that conceptual
writing often involves

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a recasting of the
familiar and the found.

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In Mayer's hands,
"I'll drown my book"

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becomes an unthinkable,
yet necessary act.

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This combination of
unthinkable or illogical,

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and necessary or obligatory,
also speaks to ways

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that the writers
in this collection

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seek to unhinge and re-examine
previous assumptions

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about writing.

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Thinking and performance are
not separate from process

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and presentation of works.

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If a book breathes,
it can also drown.

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And in the act of drowning
is a willful attempt

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to create a book which can
awake the unexpected not

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for the sake of surprise, but
because the undertaking was

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necessary in order to uproot,
dismantle, reforge, remap,

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map or find new advantages
to and entrances

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to well-trodden or
well-guarded territory.

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