Hello, everyone.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
We're excited that you are all here.
My name is Tyler Meier, and I work as the executive director
here at the Poetry Center.
I want to welcome you to the 52nd year of the Reading
& Lecture Series here at the Poetry Center in Tucson.
[APPLAUSE]
This means we're very close to qualifying for a discount pass
on the street car, which we're excited about.
And good readings have been happening here for a long time,
and we're excited about this one that's happening here tonight
and about all that's happening this fall.
We still have a small bit of wind
in our sails from the Governor's Arts Award
that the Poetry Center won this past year, the 2014 year,
for our community outreach, so we're excited about that.
And we're writing that into the fall season.
If you haven't yet picked up our fall calendar of events,
they exist here, and they look like this.
This is somewhat different than they've looked in the past.
They've been newsprint in the past,
and we've made them into this other shape and format, which
is nice for refrigerators, bulletin boards, or to post
publicly by your house.
So those exist.
Be excited, and we are excited for you to pick them up.
There's many of them over there on the table over there.
Please grab them.
We hope that you avail yourself to them.
Lots of good things happening, and we
want to make sure that they are all on your list
and on your calendar.
Included in the calendar is also our Classes & Workshops Series.
If you've never taken a class at the Poetry Center,
I hope that you'll take a look at this
and just see what's on offer this year.
These can be single-day classes.
These can be classes that are up to six weeks in sequence.
There's a range of prices.
They're all very affordable, and I hope that some of them
may appeal to you.
One that we're launching this year in particular
for those who are interested, close to my own heart,
is a parent-child collaborative writing summit.
It's a two-class session.
It just costs $5, and it should be a lot of fun.
You don't have to be a parent necessarily.
You can be an aunt, an uncle, an older brother, a grandparent,
et cetera, but childs are required.
So you can find one and take this class.
Books are for sale this evening, and I hope
you avail yourselves of them.
You can buy lots of things in the world,
but books should be one of them.
And there are many of them up here.
You can't have too many, so I hope
that you will purchase them.
The readers tonight-- there won't be a Q and A
because we have three readers, but I
do hope you'll come up afterwards and come meet them,
spend a little time talking to them, and buy some books
and ask them to sign them.
I'm sure they'd be very excited about that.
These are wonderful books that we're
really pleased to present and wonderful readers.
So again, three readers tonight--
it's an enviable lineup that we're excited about.
Steve Willey will read first, and he'll
be introduced by the poet Farid Matuk, who
is also the judge for our 2014 summer residency.
So Steve is here visiting as our summer resident.
He's been living in the guest cottage this past month.
He's here from London, England.
We're excited that he's here.
Farid is excited that he's here.
After Steve, the poet Boyer Rickel
will introduce Brian Blanchfield,
and then after Brian, finally, the poet Jane Miller
will introduce Karen Brennan.
So that will be our sequence.
We're really incredibly grateful to all of you
for supporting the Poetry Center and continuing
to support the Poetry Center.
It's an exciting example of what a public-private partnership
can look like.
It's been a public-private partnership for a really long
time, and we're grateful for all of you
who are able to contribute and support the Poetry Center.
We're grateful for you to showing up for these events
and for participating and being here.
A particular gratitude tonight that I
would like to express to the National Endowment
for the Arts, which has made a grant that supports the reading
series this entire year.
Thank you, National Endowment for the Arts.
We owe you.
[APPLAUSE]
And I will sit down, and Farid Matuk will stand up.
Please welcome Farid Matuk.
[APPLAUSE]