WEBVTT

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And now I'm going to move
on to our next reader.

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It's interesting because Sherwin
and I were reading together

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in Colombia.

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And when we got there, some
very interesting things

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occurred with some of
the other native writers,

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which were very moving for both
of us and also very compelling.

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And Sherwin was with me.

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He had originally
been invited to read

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for the festival at that time.

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And they asked him if
there was somebody else

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he wanted to have
read, or bring along,

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or somebody else who
was willing to come,

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and he suggested
that I would be.

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And of course I
said, Yes, I will go.

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I like to travel to begin with.

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I'm especially
interested in Colombia.

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And Sherwin is a wonderful
poet and human being,

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so I was happy to
travel along with him.

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And we were both reading,
all these fantastic things

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occurred.

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And during the course
of that experience

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I got a call from
Oregon State University

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and they asked me to guest
edit the international journal

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To Topos.

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Winona LaDuke had just guest
edited a first edition for them

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the year before
and she suggested

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that I could do a conglomeration
volume from United States

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and Canada.

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Well we were in Colombia and I
suggested that maybe we should

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just do the Western hemisphere.

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And so they agreed and
we got about 350 pages

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done for that international
journal in about

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a year and a half time.

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And I realized during
the making of that,

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that we could sustain that
movement a bit longer,

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and work with
people a little more

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closely, and create an
anthology that would have

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shelf life beyond a magazine.

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So the seed work started
then, six years ago,

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when Mariah was reading.

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And we mentioned
that her son was

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14 at the time when the
poetry was collected.

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I was able to save roughly
a third of the original work

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to start as the starter
for the soup that

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became this volume later.

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And Sherwin has been in that
mix all the way through.

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He was there at the
beginning and has

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stuck with the entire
process in numerous ways.

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Sherwin is originally
from White Cone, Arizona

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on the Navajo Reservation.

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He, at the time of
his contribution,

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was living in Tucson, Arizona.

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He's now living in Albuquerque.

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He is Diné, of the Bluewater
Clan and born for the Many

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Goats Clan.

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He holds an AFA from the
Institute of American Indian

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Arts Creative Writing Program
and completed his studies

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with a bachelor's here at
the University of Arizona.

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He's a recipient of the
2000-2001 Individual Poet Grant

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from the Witter Bynner
Foundation For Poetry.

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A 1999 Truman Capote Creative
Writing Fellowship at IAIA.

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I think Orlando got
one of those too.

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It wasn't in his pile, right?

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Perhaps.

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Truman Capote?

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Yes.

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[LAUGHS] He's nursing
a sore throat.

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He's a Lannan Foundation
Marfa resident, two time.

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He might be one of the hand--
maybe three people, I think,

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have done those twice and
Sherwin's one of those.

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And won a 2006 Whiting
Writer's Award.

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His books include
Shapeshift and Flood Song,

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which was a winner of
a American Book Award

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and an Open Book Award with PEN.

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And with that, please join
me in welcoming fantastic

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poet and human being,
Sherwin Bitsui.

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[APPLAUSE]

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