My name is Gail Browne.
I'm executive director of the Poetry Center.
I want to welcome you to tonight's reading,
well, lecture really, by Alison Deming.
This is an incredible turnout.
We never know when we start the beginning of a series--
[APPLAUSE]
--what it's gonna be like, and this is very gratifying
to see so many people interested in this subject
and turning out for this Poetry Center event.
So thank you so much for coming.
A little note before I begin, if you haven't
been to a reading at the Poetry Center in this open-air format,
I just like to make sure people understand
there is ambient noise during the reading.
We are sort of in the flight path of UMC helicopters,
and there is Speedway out there, so from time to time
you may hear some noise, there's nothing we can do about it.
We have the mics turned up as loud as we can,
and the speakers understand that they
need to be attentive to that, but we do beg your pardon,
but that's of course a wonderful thing to be in this space
and to have this kind of atmosphere.
So again, thank you.
Welcome to "Oh Earth, Wait for Me:
Conversations About Art and Ecology".
We take our title for this Fall's Reading and Lecture
Series from a poem by Pablo Neruda, whose work often
speaks so eloquently to the regeneration of Earth.
"Oh Earth, wait for me.
Return me, oh sun, to my wild destiny, rain of ancient wood,
bring me back the aroma and the swords that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace"-- see what I mean?
"--the solitary piece of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the large tree,
the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded
restlessness of the towering araucaria."
So from now until early December,
we'll be hearing from poets, musicians, composers,
visual artists, and translators about the ways in which
their work responds to a renewed understanding
of the natural world and our place in it.
We'll explore how the work of artists
instigate perceptual, moral, and political change that's
demanded of us now.
Clearly, the arts and humanities are
making critical contributions to the conversation about ecology,
contributions as urgent and necessary
as the information provided by science.
This series arose through discussions
with the Poetry Center staff and advisory board,
in collaboration with Alison Hawthorne Deming and Jonathan
Skinner, who's the editor of a journal called Ecopoetics,
and he'll be presenting later in October.
I am grateful to all for your insight and creativity.
In addition to the readings and lectures,
we're also presenting ecologically-themed discussion
groups.
Robinson Jeffers's Shop Talk takes
place in the library on Monday at 6 o'clock.
Classes and workshops, Eric Magrane's Ecopoetics workshop
is not to be missed, I expect you all
to be signing up after this event.
Information over there on that table.
And, of course, our library and visual art displays,
maybe you were here for the reception earlier, currently
are Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Reimagine library exhibit,
and the Ghost Net Project exhibit.
For more information, go to our website.
And again, events guides are available at the table
over here.
We are extremely grateful to the Center for Biological Diversity
and its executive director, Kieran Suckling, for offering
to co-sponsor this series.
Kieran is a member of our advisory board
and will introduce Alison Deming in just a moment.
This event is also made possible through a contribution
from the National Endowment for the Arts,
we love them, the generous contributions
of the Friends of the Poetry Center,
I think we love them even more, and the Institute
for the Environment here at the University of Arizona.
Alison Deming's books are available for sale courtesy
of U of A bookstore, back there, and copies
of her newest book "Rope" are also here,
you'll want to pick up a copy, and she'll
be happy to sign it for you after the reading.
So please welcome Kieran Suckling.
[APPLAUSE]