All right.
It's a beautiful night in Tucson.
Thank you everyone for coming out.
[CROWD CHEERING]
We have rain.
We have clouds.
It's happening.
I want to welcome everyone to the Poetry Center.
I'm Diana Delgado.
I'm the literary director here at the Poetry Center.
[CROWD CHEERING]
What a great job that you got.
[LAUGHS]
And I'm very excited and honored to host Angel Nafis
and Patricia Smith tonight at the Poetry Center in connection
to the Art for Justice Initiative
here at the Poetry Center.
Before we begin, I'm going to get through this a little
quickly.
But because I'm excited about the reading.
But I want to remind you about our upcoming events
here at the Poetry Center in October.
Our Prose Series will host T Clutch Fleischman and Andrea
Lawlor on Thursday, October 10.
And our Art for Justice reader Tongo Eisen-Martin
will present on Thursday, October 17th.
And I don't want to forget Sandra Cisneros, who
will be the Poetry Center's poet in residence--
[CROWD CHEERING]
--with the reading at the ballroom on October 24th.
Yes.
[APPLAUSE]
Just a little bit about Art for Justice.
This night's presentation is part of the Art
for Justice programming.
It's a three-year grant-funded project
that commissions new work from leading writers
to explore the relationship between poetry
and the crisis of mass incarceration
in this country and the hopes of creating
a new kind of imaginative landscape
with different possibilities.
Angel and Patricia will be reading new work written
specifically for this evening.
And we are so excited and very grateful to the Ford Foundation
and for their support.
There's another person that I'd like to thank tonight.
We are also thankful for the work, support,
and amazing vision and leadership of the lovely Kima
Jones, who is visiting Tucson this week.
Give it up for Kima.
[CROWD CHEERING]
Kima is here from LA.
And she is from Jack Jones Literary Arts.
And she has been instrumental not only
in the logistical pieces of Art for Justice,
but also just as a consultant and serving
as a visionary on this project.
So I just want to thank Kima for taking time out
of her busy schedule to come all the way up to Tucson
and be part of our community.
So gracias.
[CROWD CHEERING]
Our reading is going to begin in a few moments
with an introduction by Logan Phillips.
[CROWD CHEERING]
And Logan is an award-winning performer and MFA candidate
in poetry at the U of A. He does also have a book,
and it is called Sonoran Strange,
which is an amazing title.
So please also remember to check out his book after that.
Tonight we're also very excited to have Leilani Clark.
[CROWD CHEERING]
And Leilani Clark is here, because we're
continuing our spotlight on local
and regional non-for-profit organization
and artists who are working to advance issues
related to carceral justice.
And to also get our community involved,
to make sure that Tucson is aware of things
that they can do locally within their community.
And you'll have a rep here who you can talk to and hear more
about that.
So that will be Leilani.
Leilani, just a little bit about her.
She's the community organizer, activist and performance artist
of Native and African-American descent
who is here on behalf of BIPOC United Tucson, which
is Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
So I want to invite Leilani up now who will tell us
a little bit about her work.
And that will be followed by Logan, and then
Angel, and Patricia.
And the last thing I want to share
is that we have beautiful books for sale.
And we'll have a short Q and A at the very end of the reading.
So thank you for coming.
Welcome.
[CROWD CHEERING]