We are really so grateful to welcome Randall Horton, thank
you for being here.
Horton is the author of three collections of poetry,
including his most recent, which is Pitch Dark Anarchy, as well
as a memoir titled Hook.
He's an associate professor of English
at the University of New Haven.
And among other honors, his work has
been recognized with a Bea Gonzalez Poetry
Award and a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts.
He is also a member of the experimental performance
group, Heroes Are Gang Leaders.
In a poem from Horton's collection,
The Lingua Franca of 9th Street, the speaker
says the following to a group of teenage girls he's teaching.
''Pick up your pens.
Use them as a voice to say something,
to cut to the truth of things, to discover your own demons''.
What results from this directive in the poem
is described as a miracle.
This is what he says.
''A language shapes itself, their language.
Voices float above silence''.
Throughout Horton's poetry we see this same miracle enacted.
A singular voice floats above silence,
speaking the reality of both itself and the community
around it.
This pairing of attention to both the whole
and the individual occurs throughout Horton's work.
His poetry often feels like a collective portrait,
but one that's full of rich particular details.
Horton's poetry introduces us to families across generations,
to big city neighborhoods, and to prisons
and the inmates inside them.
But after reading, it's intimate images that linger.
A touch of red dirt and the fragrance of muscadine,
or one speaker's assertion that ''I'm a thrush, a plover,
a black winged gull''.
It's through these details that Horton's poetry
conveys the miracle of every individual life.
And importantly, it also conveys the way the biosystems work
against that miracle.
His poems describe a generation that
has fallen through a black hole, filling prisons
with boys who understand grim fractions.
By cutting to the truth of things,
demons included, Horton's poetry communicates
the need for change.
The need for new eyes to see the particular
and to imagine a new reality around it.
We're so grateful to have you here tonight, Randall.
Please join me in welcoming Randall Horton.
[APPLAUSE]