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Yá'át'ééh, buenas tardes.

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I want to first give
an acknowledgment

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and shout out to our Tohono
O'odham neighbors, whose

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land were on, and thank
them for taking care of it,

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so that it takes care of us.

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My intros are synced
so that we can let

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the powerful work speak to us.

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I'm going to read
in order of how

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the readers are going to read.

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Javier Zamora's debut
collection, Unaccompanied,

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was published by Copper
Canyon Press in 2017.

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He's been a recipient
of numerous prizes

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and fellowships, including the
Wallace Stegner, Canto Mundo,

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the MacDowell Colony, the NEA,
Poetry Foundation, and Yaddo,

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to list a few.

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He was most recently a Radcliffe
Fellow at Harvard University.

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At nine-years-old, Zamora
traveled, unaccompanied,

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4,000 miles from El Salvador
to the United States.

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Zamora's poems inform us
that we need to catch up

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and realize the
hateful border we've

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allowed to be constructed across
the periphery of our hearts

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and politicized perceptions.

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From the poem, "Saguaros," "And
there, not the promised land,

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but barbwire and barbwire with
nothing growing under it."

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Our second reader,
Joseph Legaspi,

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is co-founder of Kundiman, a
non-profit organization that

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promotes and serves
Asian-American writers

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and writing.

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His collections
of poetry include,

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Threshold, 2017;
and Imago, 2017;

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as well as the
chapbook, Subways, 2013.

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Legaspi's poems explore
the liminal space

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between conventionality
and queerness,

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country, family, and
the temporality of love.

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Born and raised in
the Philippines,

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Legaspi's family immigrated
to LA when he was 12.

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In the poem,
"Feasting," he writes

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of a stranger watching the
butchering of a jackfruit,

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"His tongue tingled ripley.

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This country's foreign
to me, he continued,

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but I'm not foreign to it."

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Perhaps this is liminal
flavor of family and movement.

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And finally, Kim
Addonizio is the author

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of seven poetry collections, two
novels, two story collections,

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and two books of writing poetry.

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Her guide, The Poets Companion,
created in collaboration

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with Dorianne Laux,
has often guided me

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through the dark moments
of curriculum development

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and my own miserable
uncertainty sitting at the desk.

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She's been a finalist for
the National Book Award

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and has received a Guggenheim
Fellowship, two NEA

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Fellowships, and
a Pushcart Prize.

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Addonizio's work shows us
the paradoxical catalog

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of romantic failures,
makes boisterous the beauty

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and absurdity of our
lives, and it reminds us

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of the grit required to create.

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So please, help me welcome
these three wonderful poets.

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[APPLAUSE]

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