WEBVTT

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Hi, everyone.

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Hi.

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OK, we all have to
take our seats now.

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Thank you.

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It's really good to
be here with everyone

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after such a long stretch
of so many things.

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We have books for sale;
they're right over here.

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We have Donika Kelly's The
Renunciations and Bestiary.

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And for every book
that you buy, we also

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are offering-- through
the Poetry Center,

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through our partnerships
with PEN America

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as part of the Art for
Justice Initiative,

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you'll receive a book: The
Sentences That Create Us:

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Crafting a Writer's
Life in Prison,

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edited by Caits Meissner,
and the foreword is written

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by Reginald Dwayne
Betts, who you know

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has been really
instrumental in our work

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here against mass incarceration.

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So you could pick
up Donika's book,

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and then you would walk
away with this book too.

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So just a reminder, yes.

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I want to remind everyone
just of two things.

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The first is that
Sesshu Foster is

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going to be here next week,
April 14, on Thursday at 7:00.

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If you don't know Sesshu's
work, he's from LA.

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He wrote City Terrace
Field Manual and just

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a whole bunch of
other seminal books

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about LA, about Chicanos, and
just about the Aztec empire.

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His work is really
amazing, and it's

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hybrid and interdisciplinary
and braided.

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So they will be
here next Thursday.

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The other thing I
want to say and remind

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everyone about-- because
I forgot to do this--

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was to introduce myself.

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So Diana Delgado, the literary
director here at Poetry Center.

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Really happy to be
here with everyone.

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Yeah!

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[CHEERING]

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I feel really excited because
we've been doing the readings,

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and it's been so cold.

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And I think this
is the first time

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that I've done the reading
where I'm able to wear a skirt

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and just sort of be Arizonian
and wear sandals and stuff.

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And I'm just glad to do that.

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I have the honor tonight
to introduce Donika Kelly.

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I recently read, The mind is
in every cell of the body,

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and considering this, I thought,
where then does pain reside?

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And considering this,
I thought, well,

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what is the afterlife of that
pain, and does it have a shape?

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And what, if any,
vibration does it make?

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And how does a poet
trace this anguish?

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Anguish that we all feel
at some point in our lives.

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But only the most
courageous of us

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dare to approach
and bear each time

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to touch it, transforming that
and those emotions surrounding

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to create meaning, much
in the way that miscreate

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meaning, meaning
that changes us.

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I often don't read poetry to
heal, nor do I write to heal.

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In fact, I seek out
and need the poet that

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stands with the poisoned
arrow in their heart,

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and despite this traumatic
obligation and tragic discord,

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they sing.

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Poets who will, standing
on and in their words,

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ascend beyond the
event and/or events

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that have befriended them
to touch the wound despite,

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despite, and despite.

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Donika Kelly is that
poet, if not the poet,

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who, after being stunned
by said arrow, declares,

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everything is stardust.

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Everything is essential.

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This is brujería.

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It is the witchcraft of
gathering and weaving together

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the collected strands
of our existence,

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even those strands that
would normally be cast out.

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The Renunciations is
an effort to be whole,

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but it is not an
effort to be perfect.

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So that after the self's
death and rebirth,

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the self now majusculated,
standing, with a capital S,

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declares, did you know
you can throw a star?

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This is an epic about
reincarnation, about the body,

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mind, heart, and soul in the
face of that which is lost,

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that which is given, and that
which cannot be taken away.

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Throughout the book, the
speaker summons her elements,

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the sweet and bittersweet
lands of LA, of the seas,

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summoning the power
of the ancestors,

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family constellation
tasked with telling.

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This is what happened to me.

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This is what happened,
and it is still in me.

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It is a book of constant making
and unmaking rooted in myth

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where Kelly, omniscient
in the best way,

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is ancient as a storyteller,
suspender of disbelief,

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who, after you've closed the
book, continues to whisper,

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the trees were all women once.

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It is with great
humility and honor

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that I introduce to
you Donika Kelly.

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Kelly is an assistant professor
of English specializing

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in poetry writing
and gender studies

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in contemporary
American literature

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at the University of Iowa.

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She is the author of
the chapbook Aviarium,

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published with 500
Places in 2017,

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and the full-length collections
Bestiary and The Renunciations.

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She also just recently won
the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

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for the book Renunciations,
and one of the judges

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cited her book as, "I
return to Kelly's book,

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and she's sent me gasping anew.

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This is poetry of
the highest order."

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Everyone, please
welcome Donika Kelly.

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[APPLAUSE]

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