WEBVTT

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Welcome, good evening.

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I'd like to make a few
announcements before tonight's

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event about upcoming events.

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Next Wednesday
night, at 8 o'clock,

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the Poetry Center will
be sponsoring a reading

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by the winners of the annual
student poetry contest.

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That's going to be held
in Kiva Auditorium,

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in the education building.

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That's a change in location.

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So everybody make
a note of that.

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And let's see, what
else is coming up?

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The following Wednesday,
April 10th, Alan Dugan

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will be reading here--

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a senior statesman of the
poetry anti-establishment

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not to be missed.

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And on Tuesday,
April 16, an event

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which is not scheduled
in our spring flyer,

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there'll be a reading
by Sandra Cisneros.

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That will be 7:30,
Tuesday, April 16, again,

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in Kiva Auditorium, in
the education building.

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And in this season of
frantic poetry events,

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one must not forget the
Tucson Poetry Festival, which

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will be running next weekend,
April 5th through 7th,

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and will feature Allen Gisberg,
Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka,

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Joy Harjo, and Cynthia
Hogue, among others.

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Tonight, I'm very pleased to
be able to introduce to you

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Lorna Dee Cervantes.

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She began writing
poetry, I found out

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during her visit, when
she was eight years old,

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went into a poetic frenzy
in her adolescence,

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writing five poems a day
while she was in high school.

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Her first book, Emplumada,
was published in 1981,

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by the University
of Pittsburgh Press.

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That was a book that explored
her experience growing up

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in San Jose,
California as a Chicana

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and Native American woman.

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It will tell you something about
her focus and determination

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at an early age to know that
the powerful poem in that book,

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"Beneath the Shadow
of the Freeway,"

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was a work that she
started when she was 17

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and finished when she was 20.

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She had the courage to walk away
from her poetry for five years,

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to study for a PhD at the
University of California

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at Santa Cruz, in the History
of Consciousness program.

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She also has found time to
establish a press, The Mango

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Press, which she
started in 1976, which

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has published a very
notable series of chapbooks

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by Chicano writers.

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Early on, she picked up people
like Alberto Rios and Sandra

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Cisneros.

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She's currently a
professor at the University

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of Colorado in Boulder.

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Her new book, forthcoming
from Arte Publico Press,

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is titled From the
Cables of Genocide--

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Poems of Love and Hunger.

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Please welcome
Lorna Dee Cervantes.

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[APPLAUSE]

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