Hello.
How is everyone?
Yeah.
We're good.
Lots of people.
Even a dog.
The dog's in the back.
But be excited.
It's here for the second time, which is great.
We are a dog-friendly Poetry Center
and we're glad that dog is here.
Welcome, everyone, to the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work as the Executive Director here at the Poetry Center.
I have just a few quick things to say
and then I will introduce my friend,
who will introduce Thomas.
Thomas is doing a lecture tonight that is called,
"We the People Percussively Agree:
Where The Pocket Beats and Breaks
Between Go-Go and Hip-Hop."
And that's exciting.
And we're all going to learn.
So buckle in, pay attention, and be
excited for what's going to happen.
There's the second lecture/craft talk that's happening next week
on Thursday and that is called, "The Assassination of Poetry,
or How I Discovered I was Writing Cover Story Poetics. "
And that will be on Thursday here again at 7:00 o'clock.
On Friday, Thomas is going to travel up to Phoenix with us
and do a poetry reading at the Phoenix Art Museum.
So be excited about all of these things.
Participate as you can.
We're really glad you guys are here tonight in Tucson.
We worked really hard to arrange for perfect weather.
So participate.
Three quick entities to thank tonight.
One is Africana Studies.
You can learn more about Africana Studies
in this brochure.
These brochures are on the table on the right over here
as you guys leave.
Come up, check it out.
There's lots to learn about this.
Cybele will say more about this in her introduction.
But this is one of the things that
is special about the U of A and about the Hip-Hop minor
that's here.
So pay attention to this.
Learn more about it.
I want to thank the National Endowment for the Arts
for their continued support of this entire reading series
this whole year.
Hi.
Keep going.
It's great.
This is Hannah.
And everything that's good that happens tonight
is because of Hannah.
So I have a very small role.
The last thing that I want to say really
quickly is thank you to the friends of the Poetry Center
and our Walt Whitman circle for their continued support,
their annual gifts that make this place keep
churning and keep doing all the good things that it's doing.
Lots of people who care about and support
the mission of this place and we're
grateful for every one of them.
Every gift, big or small, makes a huge difference.
And so thanks to all of you who are here who participate.
Thanks to everyone here who just is participating
and here because there's a poetry reading/lecture.
We're glad you're all are here.
Please come back, and thank you for being here.
Without further ado, I introduce my friend Cybele Knowles.
Cybele has run the reading series
for years and years and years.
Is now transitioning and helping orient our new website,
which we hope to launch in late January/early February.
Probably February--
[LAUGHING]
--knowing websites.
But we're really excited and it's
going to be a big new robust exciting thing that
will be Tucson based, but also be
a thing that talks to people farther and farther
away from Tucson.
And so Cybele is in charge of all of that exciting things
that are happening.
My friend Cybele Knowles.
[APPLAUSE]