- Hi, everyone.
Very happy to be here.
Thank you Becka.
So I'm going to be introducing Felicia Zamora.
Felicia Zamora is the author of the poetry
collections "Of Form and Gather" and
was the winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize
from the University of Notre Dame, "And In,
Open Marvel," and "Instrument of Gaps",
which was published by Slope Editions.
She won the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun prize for "Verse from Verse".
The education programs coordinator
for the Virginia C Piper center for creative writing at Arizona
State University, Zamora also serves as an associate poetry
editor for the Colorado Review.
So this is the first time that I've actually met Felicia.
I first met her through her work,
through her three books that I read through this past week.
And one of the things that struck me was her,
which I'm going to talk a little bit more about,
was that her work is almost like a magnet.
It picks up so many things around in the world
that you kind of can't help but finish reading those things
and take them with you.
So related to that, one of the things
that I thought about reading Felicia's work
is that sometimes after walking through a field,
you realize that some of the things have come back with you.
Pieces of the walk stay with and on you.
Sometimes you leave with burrs on your socks.
You might leave with the little sunburn,
so that at night when you lay in bed,
your body is pulsating a little bit with the warmth
from that afternoon.
That's what reading a Felicia Zamora poem is like.
To quote her poem, "A Lesson", so that
later on our back branches tickle the stars,
rub fast their distant warmth.
The last thing that I wanted to say about Felicia Zamora's work
is that not only can you feel that she
is this magnet for the world, I also
think that after reading her work, there's an openness to it
that I really, really enjoyed.
So I just want to welcome Felicia Zamora.
Thank you.