WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.550 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.550 --> 00:00:04.070 align:middle line:84% Since her first book, Science and Other Poems, 00:00:04.070 --> 00:00:06.560 align:middle line:84% Alison Deming has written beautifully, 00:00:06.560 --> 00:00:10.010 align:middle line:84% not just about the stuff of the world, the epiphanies, 00:00:10.010 --> 00:00:12.800 align:middle line:84% the banalities, that which we rage for 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.500 align:middle line:84% or against, that which is worthy of wonder 00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:17.840 align:middle line:84% and if wonder then maybe, possibly, 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:20.480 align:middle line:84% love, but also beautifully about how 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:25.160 align:middle line:84% we know what we do about this place where we make our home. 00:00:25.160 --> 00:00:28.940 align:middle line:84% It's not enough to know that the Earth is warming up, 00:00:28.940 --> 00:00:32.360 align:middle line:84% or that walruses are exhibiting strange behavior somewhere, 00:00:32.360 --> 00:00:34.460 align:middle line:84% or that wild spaces are necessary. 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:38.250 align:middle line:84% Alison's work has been to suggest that it is critical 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:40.790 align:middle line:84% how we know these things, how we go 00:00:40.790 --> 00:00:43.100 align:middle line:90% about knowing this knowledge. 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:45.710 align:middle line:84% In this way, her work has always been, in a way, 00:00:45.710 --> 00:00:47.060 align:middle line:90% about citizenship. 00:00:47.060 --> 00:00:50.030 align:middle line:84% A citizenship the work is careful to remind us 00:00:50.030 --> 00:00:51.920 align:middle line:90% that we all participate in. 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:54.380 align:middle line:90% Our presence as our passport. 00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:56.210 align:middle line:90% We're all citizens. 00:00:56.210 --> 00:00:58.790 align:middle line:84% And in this Anthropocene we get to call home, 00:00:58.790 --> 00:01:02.990 align:middle line:84% Deming reminds us that a vote from a saguaro, or a mosquito, 00:01:02.990 --> 00:01:05.690 align:middle line:84% or a Jaguar, counts as much as a vote 00:01:05.690 --> 00:01:08.720 align:middle line:84% from the executive director of a Poetry Center. 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:10.970 align:middle line:84% In this republic of our current moment, 00:01:10.970 --> 00:01:15.140 align:middle line:84% Alison's work makes clear that the ecological stakes, indeed, 00:01:15.140 --> 00:01:18.950 align:middle line:84% are impossibly high, promising both hope and grief. 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:22.130 align:middle line:84% And that is both our burden and our pleasure. 00:01:22.130 --> 00:01:24.890 align:middle line:84% Part of what I admire in Alison's career, a career 00:01:24.890 --> 00:01:27.350 align:middle line:84% spanning 10 books of poetry and prose, 00:01:27.350 --> 00:01:30.770 align:middle line:84% is her unwavering commitment to inquiry 00:01:30.770 --> 00:01:34.160 align:middle line:84% both of the scientific and the imaginative kind, 00:01:34.160 --> 00:01:37.280 align:middle line:84% suggesting that these two modes aren't mutually exclusive, 00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:41.660 align:middle line:84% as they so often seem or are presented and portrayed. 00:01:41.660 --> 00:01:43.910 align:middle line:84% And they're, in fact, necessarily intertwined, 00:01:43.910 --> 00:01:47.060 align:middle line:84% and co-dependent, and periodically a red hot, tangled 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:47.990 align:middle line:90% mess. 00:01:47.990 --> 00:01:51.680 align:middle line:84% And so her method of inquiry mirrors the sophistication 00:01:51.680 --> 00:01:54.920 align:middle line:84% and the blurred edges of the beautiful and cruel world 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:56.420 align:middle line:90% we live in. 00:01:56.420 --> 00:02:00.140 align:middle line:84% Her latest book, Zoologies, just out for Milkweed Editions, 00:02:00.140 --> 00:02:03.360 align:middle line:84% the book we are celebrating and launching tonight in Tucson-- 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:03.920 align:middle line:90% hooray-- 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:08.780 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:08.780 --> 00:02:12.205 align:middle line:84% --that happens to be for sale just right over here. 00:02:12.205 --> 00:02:13.580 align:middle line:84% That we would like to say, Deming 00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:16.580 align:middle line:84% recreates the form of a bestiary, here, 00:02:16.580 --> 00:02:19.710 align:middle line:84% and gets at the animal, the animus in all of us, 00:02:19.710 --> 00:02:22.340 align:middle line:84% the core, common link that we share. 00:02:22.340 --> 00:02:24.830 align:middle line:84% She's a former director of the Poetry Center 00:02:24.830 --> 00:02:26.420 align:middle line:84% and a professor of creative writing 00:02:26.420 --> 00:02:28.190 align:middle line:90% at the University of Arizona. 00:02:28.190 --> 00:02:30.290 align:middle line:84% Alison has recently been named one 00:02:30.290 --> 00:02:33.680 align:middle line:84% of the four inaugural endowed chairs in the Agnese Nelms 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:36.770 align:middle line:84% Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice. 00:02:36.770 --> 00:02:42.330 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:42.330 --> 00:02:45.075 align:middle line:84% I have been lobbying her to turn it into an endowed couch, 00:02:45.075 --> 00:02:48.420 align:middle line:84% and that she can leave it at the Poetry Center anytime 00:02:48.420 --> 00:02:49.490 align:middle line:90% she wants. 00:02:49.490 --> 00:02:50.193 align:middle line:90% I'm kidding. 00:02:50.193 --> 00:02:52.110 align:middle line:84% We will all benefit from this new appointment, 00:02:52.110 --> 00:02:54.600 align:middle line:84% and we're all so excited to see the things 00:02:54.600 --> 00:02:55.770 align:middle line:90% that Alison will do with it. 00:02:55.770 --> 00:02:58.890 align:middle line:84% So please welcome, a friend and mentor, Alison Deming. 00:02:58.890 --> 00:03:00.740 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]