WEBVTT

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My pleasure right now to
introduce Sarah Gonzales, who

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will come up and tell
us a little bit more

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about our reader
tonight, Ross Gay.

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Sarah is the co-director
of Spoken Futures, which,

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among many things, also supports
and promotes and produces

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the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam,
one of the most exciting poetry

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things that's
happening in Tucson.

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If you have--

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you for that applause.

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And there's a Slam
this Saturday.

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Is that right?

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Yeah.

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OK, good.

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If you're interested, and Sarah
might tell us more about that.

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She's also an assistant director
of Outreach and Education

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for the Dean of
Students' Office working

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for the different
cultural centers on campus

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on intersectional work between
the different cultural centers

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here at the U of
A. It's my pleasure

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to welcome Sarah Gonzales
who'll tell us more about Ross.

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[CLAPPING]

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All right.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is what happens when
you bring your students.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you, Tyler.

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I appreciate it, and
thanks for being here.

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Poetry is not a luxury.

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And I'm showing this photograph
of Ross Gay wearing a shirt

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with this quote by
Audre Lorde on it

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while he's standing amidst
some tall, yellowy flowers.

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And I know that he is tall
because one of my students

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said excitedly, I met
Ross Gay once in Philly.

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He's such a great
person and tall, very--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--like really, really tall.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Ross Gay is the author of
three books, "Against Which,"

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"Bringing the Shovel
Down" and "Catalog

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of Unabashed Gratitude," winner
of the 2015 National Book

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Critics Circle Award and the
2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry

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Award.

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Ross is a founding board member
of the Bloomington Community

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Orchard, a nonprofit
free-fruit-for-all food justice

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and joy project, which I got to
learn a bit more about earlier

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during dinner.

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Ross Gay poems remind to
open our eyes to the nature

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and everything.

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Reminds us that nature
is reverberating

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in the dirt under
our fingernails,

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and also the
reverberations of nature

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are constantly holding our
precarious parts together.

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If you read his poems,
you will expand belief.

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Bodies become flutes sometimes,
become horses sometimes,

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and I'm over here
wishing I, too,

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could feel that
exact moment when

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he shifts from this to that.

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My favorite poem being
sharing with the ants.

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As our indigeneity here holds
las hormigas very sacred

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and what a joyous way
to be with the ants,

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slurping figs together.

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I love the easy, the
every day in Ross Gay.

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The way I learn more about
plants in a single essay of his

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than I did in any biology class.

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The way I learned that
sunchokes are sometimes called

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"fartichokes."

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[LAUGHTER]

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And now I know why my favorite
soup has some consequences.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But we use parsnips now.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And now I know-- or
rather, I respect

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where the sunchoke comes from.

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It's like getting it in
the market that somehow

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kind of erases the full story.

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And now I know that the photo
where he's wearing the Audre

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Lorde quote, well,
those must be sunchokes

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in the background with
their tall, yellowy flowers.

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Is that true?

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Yes!

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[LAUGHTER]

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I had this epiphany.

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I was like, oh my God, I
just identified the flower.

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Right.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I know all this from
a Ross Gay essay.

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I will say I only
knew of him after I

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read "A Small, Needful
Fact," and then

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I began reading backwards
through all of his works.

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And that poem is a
piece that sticks to me

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as it should to all of us.

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And of all the words used on Mr.
Eric Garner after his murder,

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he deserved at least that
poem, that humanization of him.

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And so in the
desperate few hours

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before history
shifts again, there

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is no place I would
rather be than here, now,

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sharing space with Ross Gay with
my friends, with my students,

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and with many of my family.

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So I hope that we all hold
that poetry is not a luxury,

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and I thank you for being here.

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Bienvenidos a Tucson.

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[CLAPPING]