WEBVTT

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Oh, yes.

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We are in for a special
one tonight, friends.

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Tonight we welcome two poets who
are doing that real work, that

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work most needed right now in
this world, in this nation,

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and on this campus.

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In the early 1960s
in an essay entitled,

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"The creative process,"
James Baldwin wrote, quote,

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"If we understood
ourselves better,

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we would damage ourselves less."

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He argued that nations,
like individuals,

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must not look away
continuing, quote,

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"That whoever cannot tell
himself the truth about his

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past is trapped in it, is
immobilized in the prison

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of his undiscovered
self," end quote.

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And don't we seem
immobilized today?

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Don't we see the
mass incarceration

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of the undiscovered self?

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Don't we see ourselves
saying, "Really?

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In 2019, really?"

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just a few too many times.

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Well, here, two poets writing
against that very particular

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United Statesian tendency
to look away, to forget,

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to gloss that
weaponized amnesia that

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is part and parcel of white
supremist systems everywhere.

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Here tonight we are with two
poets who write themselves

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free, who write us all
into motion as they

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write across pages and
stages writing the truth--

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that unique all-encompassing,
all-mobilizing word truth,

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writing motion
needed by a movement,

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writing across two
generations they represent

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and all the
generations represented

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in them, past and future.

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So Patricia Smith,
born and raised

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on the West side of Chicago.

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She has worked as a
journalist, a playwright,

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a librettist for opera,
a children's book author.

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She writes history.

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She is a master of
the poetic form.

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And yes for years, she won
National Poetry Slams like

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they're going out of style.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Author of 10 books,
including her

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most recent, Incendiary Art.

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Winner of the 2018 Kingsley
Tufts poetry award,

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and the 2017 Los Angeles Times
Book Prize, and the 2018 NAACP

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Image Award, and finalist
for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.

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She is a Cave Canem
faculty member,

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a professor of English at
CUNY College of Staten Island

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and a faculty member of the
Sierra Nevada MFA program.

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Angel Nafis is the author
of BlackGirl Mansion.

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She earned her BA at Hunter
College and as an MFA candidate

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in poetry at Warren Wilson
Her Her work has appeared

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in the BreakBeat Poets
anthology, The Rumpus, Poetry

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Magazine, BuzzFeed
reader, and elsewhere.

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Nafis is a Cave Canem fellow,
the recipient of a Millay

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Colony residency,
Urban Word NYC mentor,

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and the founder and curator
of the Green Light Bookstore

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Poetry Salon.

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In 2011 she represented
NYC at both the Women

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of the World Poetry Slam and
the National Poetry Slam.

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Facilitating writing workshops
and reading poems globally.

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She lives in Brooklyn.

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In 2016, Nafis was the
recipient of the Ruth Lilly

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and Dorothy Sargent
Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship

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from the Poetry Foundation.

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[CROWD CHEERING]

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And in 2017, she was awarded
a creative writing fellowship

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from the National
Endowment for the Arts.

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We are in for a special
one tonight, friends.

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[CROWD CHEERING]

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Please join me in welcoming
none other than Patricia Smith

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and Angel Nafis.

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[CROWD CHEERING LOUDLY]

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