Glad to have everybody here.
Thank you for coming out to hear poetry on a beautiful Thursday
night in Tucson.
A perfect Thursday night in Tucson.
My name is Tyler.
I work as the director here at the Poetry Center.
We're really, really happy to have Maggie Smith here.
She's our fall poet in residence for 2018.
So a round of applause to have her here.
[APPLAUSE]
What that means is, unlike other poets who might come and go,
Maggie will stick around for a little bit.
And we're so grateful for that.
So she'll have some time here in Tucson
to work, some time to make use of the Poetry Center's
library, some time to enjoy Tucson in this weather.
So we're really, really happy about that.
I was with Maggie earlier today, who
has a little bit of the onset of a cold,
and we were purchasing some cold medicine.
But I got to see how she'd already decorated the Poetry
Center's cottage with her new manuscript, which is already
spread out and is in process.
And it's getting revised and shaped,
additions and subtractions.
And so I'm really hopeful that this
is time that leads to exciting new shape on a new book, which
we should all be so lucky to have that book in the world.
And these residences, I just want to really quickly thank
Amazon.com which helps support these
through their literary partnership series.
And so we're grateful to them for their support of the Poetry
Center through that process.
It's my pleasure to introduce the person who will tell you
more about Maggie, and that's my friend, Laura Espósto.
She's an MFA candidate here at the University of Arizona.
She's an amazing poet in her own right.
She's also a fantastic human that I've
come to enjoy so much and getting to know her
in many different ways, including,
she has-- she's dealt with my children and their demands
to hear heavy metal music.
And she rises to that challenge in addition
to her amazing work as a poet.
So please help me welcome Laura Espósto.
[APPLAUSE]