Hi, everybody.
Here we go.
Are you ready?
Yes.
Good.
How many of you were at the event last night
at the Jewish History Museum?
You win.
Ah, that was a beautiful night.
And you're lucky if you're here tonight
because you get to hear a second happening that
will be different from what you heard last night.
And we're so excited about what's
happening here this evening and for the visitors that are here.
We were talking at dinner before we got here
that we have visitors from Los Angeles
and from Houston and from Mexico City, which makes Tucson
the Center of that universe.
And so welcome to the center.
I'm glad you guys are here, the Poetry Center,
this Center of that universe.
My name is Tyler Meier.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center.
I want to just do some very quick details about upcoming
events at the Poetry Center, tell you
about a couple of things and then frame tonight a little bit
and then welcome up and introduce
Ariel Goldberg, who'll tell us more about the poets who
are here with us this evening.
First of all, if you haven't noticed,
this weekend is the Tucson Festival of Books.
That's happening, and there's a lot of tents.
So avail yourselves of that.
Lots of great literary things that you can discover and enjoy
it through the weekend.
And you can learn more at tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.
Lots of good stuff happening.
Also upcoming at the Poetry Center here on March 14, we
have the poet Natalie Shapero, who will be reading,
who's absolutely wonderful.
And I promise that will be one of the funniest poetry readings
that you'll go to.
She's delightful and amazing and truly great.
So we're glad that she's coming to visit us.
We have two events coming up this March
that we offer in conjunction with the theme of poetry
and democracy, which is part of a grant-funded project.
The Poetry Center is part of a group
called The Poetry Coalition, a national coalition
of organizations working together
to present common-themed programming
in the month of March.
And so we have a couple of events
connected to this theme of poetry and democracy.
On March 12th, we have a reception for the new exhibit
that's up at the Poetry Center.
It's called Broken Threads--
Lives Unraveled.
And both of the artists that are represented--
the artist group's collectives that are represented inside
that exhibit use textile and language to make naming--
to use naming and legibility to make visible lives that
have been lost in different times of violence
on both sides of the border in the Sonoran desert.
It's a very beautiful and very powerful exhibit.
And I encourage you to come to this reception
to learn more about it, learn more
about the artists who have worked on that project
and that's on March 12th.
It's a Tuesday night, different from our typical programming
here on Thursdays.
And it's at 6:00 PM at the Poetry Center, and it's free.
The exhibit is up right now all throughout the ongoing spring
season at the Poetry Center.
So if you want to come by and see it,
you can see it at any time.
The Poetry Center is open.
It's one of the programs that we're doing
with Poetry and Democracy.
The other is one of our Art for Justice readings.
And that's the next reading and the Art for Justice series
on March 21.
And that features two poets-- the poet Evie Shockley
and the Patrick Rosal, who will both be coming
to premiere new work that they've written in completion
of commissions that we've asked for and connected
to that project.
So we're really excited to hear new work from them.
That project pairs poets with the problem
of mass incarceration in this country
and ask them to think about it.
And so they'll be reading new work
connected to that in their own inquiries and investigations.
We're grateful to the Ford Foundation
for support in that project.
Lastly, and totally differently, if you-- how many
of about Cyclovia?
A lot of you do.
OK, good.
If you don't, there's just a lot of bicycles
involved on streets in Tucson.
I want to encourage you to be very excited.
You'll start seeing more and more of these around this place
and in other places.
This is the map of the Cyclovia route this year.
And it will be themed for National Poetry Month.
So we're really excited about this.
More than 40,000 Tucsonans usually participate.
A section of city streets are closed down.
There's bicycling, a celebration of livable streets,
healthy lifestyles, and poetry, all things
we can get excited about.
This year, the map and the route will go by the Poetry Center.
So expect a lot of really wild and delightful poetry
interventions to be coming to you soon on a bicycle.
Our goal is that all 40,000 people experience at least
one poem during the day.
So that's the project.
So come and visit, enjoy.
That's April 7th.
And that map, there's extras of those up here if you just
want to learn more about that or what Cyclovia is all about.
Lastly, so tonight's event, last night's event
are collaborations.
And we've been collaborating with the Jewish History Museum
here in Tucson, which we're so grateful to be working
with them on this project, bringing these poets here
to Tucson.
So I just want to take a quick second to acknowledge and thank
our collaborators in this regard, Brian Davis, Ariel
Goldberg, and then Robert Snyderman,
in absentia, who sort of put all this in motion long ago.
So thank you to the Jewish History Museum for working
with us and for partnering.
[APPLAUSE]
If you haven't been to the Jewish History Museum,
it's a thing you must do.
And it's here in Tucson, and it's a place to know about
and to visit and to learn from.
So please go see that space if you don't know about it.
It's an amazing, amazing beautiful space here in Tucson,
doing really incredible work and a lot of really
exciting partnerships.
The event tonight is a rare opportunity
to present some of the poets who are here together,
which doesn't always happen.
And we're really excited about that.
Both Jen Hofer and John Pluecker have
independent and separate practices as interpreters,
as translators, as poets on their own.
But they also collaborate together
under the rubric or sort of the name of Antena,
which is a radical justice--
language, justice, and experimentation collaborative.
They do incredible work together.
And tonight, which are going to experience from them
is a presentation from Antena, which we're so excited about.
We're also very excited that Myriam Moscona is here
visiting with us, who's traveled from Mexico City
to Tucson, which we're so grateful for.
We'll hear some of her poetry as well and some
of the translation that's happened behind her work.
To tell you more about the poets who are coming tonight,
I want to welcome up my friend and colleague, Ariel Goldberg,
who is the curator of community engagement
at the Jewish History Museum.
Please let me welcome Ariel.
[APPLAUSE]
Welcome.
Yeah.