Hello everyone, welcome.
How are you all?
Good, yeah, we're great.
Happy to see everybody, thanks for being here.
Glad you're here at the Poetry Center,
thanks for choosing the Poetry Center
on a blustery night in Tucson, which
we don't get to say very often in describing Tucson.
But also, glad that you're here for this one in particular,
this is going to be a great reading.
This is the first of an annual series
that we're launching here at the Poetry Center called the Tom
Sanders Memorial reading.
And it's a new reading in our reading series
that brings back writers with the connection
to the University of Arizona, writers who've
graduated from the U of A, or connected to the U of A
through the U of A press, or connected in other ways.
And we're really excited to launch this reading tonight
in legacy of Tom Sanders.
Tom was really an extraordinary person,
with a career in service to the University of Arizona,
and to the nonprofit sector here in Tucson.
How many of you knew Tom, know Tom?
Many of you do, yeah, thank you.
He would like all of you enormously because you
chose to come to a poetry reading
tonight while there was also a U of A basketball game,
and that would please him.
Although he would also say Go Cats
on the side, or Andale Gatos.
It's grateful to all of you for being here for this.
Tom was an undergraduate creative writing major
here at the U of A, and he loved very much the Poetry Center.
He played an important role in the construction of this home
for the Poetry Center, the Helen S. Schaefer building.
And when I showed up in Tucson, almost six years ago now,
as a very excited and goofy guy from the Midwest,
Tom was one of many people who took me under his wing
and showed me many kinds of possibilities
and opportunities, and offered a lot of help
that I both really desperately needed.
And then also, he was one of the only people who could give that
to me through his connections, and through what his work had
been at the university.
And I came, ultimately, to realize
that as a real kind of grace, and a kind of support
that I came to really deeply value and love about him.
No op-ed space in Tucson was safe from his pen,
and so that was another thing I loved about him.
He was happy to speak his mind, and wanted to, and would.
And he also wrote very lovely holiday cards
that were full of his original poems,
and if you were were lucky, you got one of those.
So we launch this reading tonight
to recognize Tom's great love of the Poetry Center,
and the University of Arizona.
We're very happy to bring back Peggy Shumaker, an alum
of the MFA program here at the U of A.
We're so happy that Maurya is here to help us celebrate
and launch this reading tonight, and grateful for it,
behind both of their selected poems, which
are available for sale if you are so inclined over here
at the table.
And we're grateful to them for being here.
A couple of things, I also want to mention
about what's upcoming next at the Poetry Center.
Next week we have an event with the Mexican poet Myriam
Moscona, who's here with her translators
John Hofer and Jen Pluecker, who together make up a translation
collaborative known as Antena.
And so they read on Wednesday evening
in Tucson, so not the typical Thursday night,
on Wednesday at the Jewish History Museum, which
will be a trilingual reading in Spanish, English, and Ladino.
And we're so excited about that.
And then they'll read here on Thursday night at the Poetry
Center together, featuring Myriam, but also
talking a lot about the work that Jen and John do
as the translation--
a radical translation collaborative known as Antena
here at the Poetry Center.
And that's Thursday evening at 7 o'clock.
So Wednesday at the Jewish History Museum
and then Thursday back here at the Poetry Center,
both events are free, please come and see those.
To help welcome and introduce Peggy and Maurya,
I want to introduce my friend, the poet and translator Cynthia
Hogue, who we're so grateful to have here in Tucson
in a permanent way.
So come on up, Cynthia.
[APPLAUSE]
Stay here.
Also, I just want to thank Ander Monson
for making the very beautiful broadsides that you
have at your seats tonight.
We don't get to have that every single reading,
and it's special when we do.
And so a quick round of applause to Ander
and to New Michigan Press for their generosity in making
these.
[APPLAUSE]
There's just a small matter of business
before I introduce our honored guests,
and that is that it is Tyler's 40th birthday today.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,
happy birthday dear Tyler, happy birthday to you.
[APPLAUSE]
I told Ander I would not sing on key, and I think I delivered.
[LAUGHTER]