WEBVTT

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Hello.

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OK, I'm going to
introduce Katherine,

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who has many prestigious
accomplishments.

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She graduated from the
University of Arizona

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with a BS in ecology
and evolutionary biology

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and a BA in creative writing.

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She was a Henry Holmes fellow
at the University of Virginia

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and received her MFA in 2004.

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In addition to writing,
she has spent the last 10

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years working as a research
assistant and field ecologist.

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Larson's first collection,
Radial Symmetry,

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was selected by Louise
Gluck as winner of the Yale

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Series of Younger Poets.

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She is the recipient of a Ruth
Lilly fellowship and the Union

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League Civic and Arts
Foundation Poetry Prize.

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She recently won the Kate
Tufts Discovery Award.

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Her work has appeared
in numerous magazines.

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I won't list them all.

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It is not surprising for a
poet to be inspired by nature.

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I think we are
stereotyped this way.

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Some poets look to the stars,
the weather, the seasons,

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the plants and animals with
such gaunt imaginations

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that we as readers forget
the effervescent curiosity

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that nature invokes
in the first place.

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Katherine Larson
shows us that you

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can be inspired through
nature, that a poet writing

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of environment isn't
necessarily sitting under a tree

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waiting for an epiphany, but
contemplating the odd and equal

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symmetry of its leaves.

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It seems the keen
observations of a scientist

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are no different than
the sensitive ruminations

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of a poet.

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The detailed world
enthralls us both,

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baffles us in its odd geometry,
its egocentricless existence.

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In it, we marvel.

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We swim through cities
buried in sea water.

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We watch the gods decay.

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Through her poetry, we
enter what we can't escape,

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a hallway with a
thousand human brains

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carved out of crystal, a world
both natural and man-made.

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Please welcome Katherine Larson.