WEBVTT

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I will stop talking
and we'll bring up

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the introducer for Alison
now, who's a good friend.

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Diana Liverman, a
professor of geography here

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at the University of Arizona.

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A friend of the Poetry Center.

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One of the leading thinkers
about climate change anywhere

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and we're so grateful that
she's here in Tucson with us.

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Thank you.

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OK., Well, good
evening, and thank you.

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I was here at the
beginning of the series

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to talk about climate
change, but tonight I'm

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going to talk about
Alison Hawthorne Deming.

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And I'm very honored
to introduce her.

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She's a treasure for us at
the University of Arizona

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and far beyond.

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And because Alison conveys
such empathy and vision

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of her nature and
the planet, I've

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got a few slides just to
give us a sense of nature

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beyond where we are.

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And I'm beginning with
daffodils and a little bit

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of personal story because
so much of Allison's writing

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is personal.

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And I begin with
daffodils because that's

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where I found my first
connections between poetry

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and nature.

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We spent family holidays in the
English Lake District, hiking,

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messing around in rowboats,
and reading when it rained.

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My dad would sometimes
read us poetry.

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When I climbed my first
3,000 foot mountain--

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and that's a really big
mountain in England--

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at the age of 10 or
so, it was a long,

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steep hike culminating along
a terrifying glacial arête.

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My dad pulled out a small book
of poems by William Wordsworth

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and he read me "On
Her First Ascent

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to the Summit of Helvellyn."

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And this is Helvellyn
in this photo.

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Soon after that, I
became a little obsessed

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with the Lake District.

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Its Ice Age topographies
and its poets and writers.

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And it was probably
around that time

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that I decided I would
study geography and study

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the environment.

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Many years later, my
love of geography,

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which I was then
studying at UCLA,

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and to be honest my crush on a
fellow geography student, who

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came from Tucson, brought
me to the Sonoran desert

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and another assembly
of creative writers.

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Like my dad, this friend liked
to take books on our hikes

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into the Pinacate
and the Catalinas.

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And he would read Lauren Isley,
Edward Abbey, and Gary Snyder.

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I recount this personal
history to explain

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why I'm so delighted and amazed
to introduce another great poet

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and essayist of landscapes,
life, and living nature, Alison

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Hawthorne Deming,
to you this evening.

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Although I haven't yet taken
one of her books on a hike,

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we all should.

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And they're over there,
for you to pick up.

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And many of them won't add a
lot of weight to your backpack.

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She writes beautifully and
concisely in many cases.

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And she writes exactly the
sort of essays and poems

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that need to be read in nature.

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I first encountered
Alison's writings

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when I first moved
to Arizona in 1994.

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And someone gave me
her edit-- no, 1996.

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Someone gave me her edited
anthology on poetry in the West

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as a welcome gift.

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Soon after, my own research on
environmental issues in Mexico

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brought me to Alison again
through her poem sequence

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on the monarch butterflies,
so threatened and needing

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of publicity and protection.

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And I actually think back then
I was head of Latin American

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Studies and we helped bring
Homero Aridjis out to Tucson.

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I initially assumed
that Alison belonged

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to and in the Southwest, but
anyone who knows or reads

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Alison understands
that we in Arizona

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have to share her
with another landscape

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in the opposite corner
of the continent.

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She has a home on
Grand Manan Island

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in New Brunswick, Canada,
to which she frequently

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escapes in body and in writing.

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And in fact, I'm surprised
you haven't been hiding there

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since the last election.

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When I became
director of the New

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Institute of the Environment
here, one of my goals

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was to include the humanities.

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And Alison was
the first person I

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thought of from the humanities
to join our advisory board.

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Alison is a professor
of English who

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has derived-- directed the
creative writing program

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in the Department of English.

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And for most of you would know
that she directed this Poetry

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Center from 1990 to 2002.

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She currently holds
the Agnese Nelms Haury

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chair in Environment
and Social Justice.

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So I re-read some
of Alison's work

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in preparing to
introduce her tonight.

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And one thing about
creative writers,

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especially compared
to scientists,

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in their extreme boringness
about not sharing anything

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about themselves,
is that you learn

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a lot about their
personal lives,

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the lives of creative writers,
from their poems and essays.

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Their deepest
thoughts and emotions.

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We know, from her writing, that
Alison was a college dropout

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to raise a wonderful daughter.

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That she worked for 15
years in public health

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before completing her MFA.

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And that she lost her
mother and brother to cancer

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and mourns them still.

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She finds solace and inspiration
in wild places, and animals,

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and our long
evolutionary history,

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and in research and
scientific discovery.

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Alison is the author of many
books of essays and poems.

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And she's edited
two anthologies.

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And in order for
you to recognize

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which ones you should
pick up afterwards,

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I show many of her books
of essays and poems here.

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Her 1994 collection
Science and Other Poems

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won the Walt Whitman award.

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Her Monarch sequence
was published in 1997.

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Other poetry works include
"Genius Loci" and "Rope."

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Essay collections include
Temporary Homelands,

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The Edge of the Civilized
World, Writing the Sacred

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into the Real, and my
favorite, her last book

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of essays in 2014,
Zoologies, which

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explores the relation and
meaning of the relationship

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between humans and animals.

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Stalking Alison
on the internet I

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found these two delightful
images of encounters

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between Alison and animals.

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Although from
Zoologies, she has yet

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to meet a woolly mammoth
or a rabbit from Mars.

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So in honor of the first
chapter of Zoologies,

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I bought her a small
mammoth to meet tonight.

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In twenty-- I hope he's
not too distracting.

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My 10-month-old puppy has
been looking yearningly

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at the mammoths
for several days,

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to disembowel it in the
tradition of Alison's

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engagement with the rawer,
tougher side of nature.

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To talk a little bit more
about Alison, in 2016,

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she published two new
books of poetry, Stairway

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to Heaven, from
which I believe she

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will read a lot tonight, and
Death Valley: Painted Light.

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She has published her work in
many journals and magazines,

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including Orion, American
Scientist, and the Georgia

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Review.

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And her writing has been
widely anthologized.

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She's been honored
in so many ways I

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can't read them all out to you.

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She received a Wallace
Stegner Fellowship

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from Stanford University,
two poetry fellowships

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from the National
Endowment for the Arts,

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and fellowships from the
Fine Arts Work Center

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in Provincetown, the Arizona
Commission on the Arts,

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the Tucson Pima Arts Council,
and the National Writer's Voice

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Residency award.

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Her work has been awarded
the Pablo Neruda prize

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from Nimrod, a Pushcart
Prize, the Gertrude B. Claytor

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Award from the Poetry
Society of America,

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and the Bayer Award for Science
Writing in Creative Nonfiction.

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She's held residencies at
Yaddo, Mesa Refuge, the Island

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Institute, and
many others, and is

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very popular in being invited
to speak at other colleges

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and universities.

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Most recently, she was awarded
a prestigious Guggenheim

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Fellowship.

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We are very fortunate to
have Alison with us tonight.

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Please join me in welcoming
our very own Alison Hawthorne

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Deming.

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