WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.910 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.910 --> 00:00:02.730 align:middle line:90% Hi, everyone. 00:00:02.730 --> 00:00:03.920 align:middle line:90% We're going to be starting. 00:00:03.920 --> 00:00:05.420 align:middle line:84% We're waiting for one more person, 00:00:05.420 --> 00:00:10.170 align:middle line:90% but I think we're good to begin. 00:00:10.170 --> 00:00:11.680 align:middle line:90% I'm Diana Delgado. 00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:15.630 align:middle line:84% I'm the literary director here at the Poetry Center. 00:00:15.630 --> 00:00:18.360 align:middle line:84% And I want to thank you for choosing to be with us here 00:00:18.360 --> 00:00:21.690 align:middle line:90% tonight at the Poetry Center. 00:00:21.690 --> 00:00:25.500 align:middle line:84% This is the final reading of our Spring 2022 reading and lecture 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:29.895 align:middle line:84% series, which included Forrest Gander, Joy Williams, Jay 00:00:29.895 --> 00:00:35.070 align:middle line:84% Hopler, Kimberly Johnson, Marwa Helal, Marcelo Hernandez 00:00:35.070 --> 00:00:38.700 align:middle line:84% Castillo, Donika Kelly, and Sesshu Foster 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:41.130 align:middle line:84% who we'll hear from in a few minutes. 00:00:41.130 --> 00:00:43.290 align:middle line:90% This was a tough season. 00:00:43.290 --> 00:00:45.690 align:middle line:84% Myself and the rest of the Poetry Center team 00:00:45.690 --> 00:00:47.670 align:middle line:84% weathered many challenges, and this 00:00:47.670 --> 00:00:50.880 align:middle line:84% is why it's so important to not only celebrate 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:53.980 align:middle line:84% that work but to also celebrate you, 00:00:53.980 --> 00:00:57.870 align:middle line:84% our audience who sees the value in what we do and encourages us 00:00:57.870 --> 00:01:02.520 align:middle line:84% to continue to build our shared community to create access, 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:05.760 align:middle line:90% equity, and hope. 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:09.300 align:middle line:84% Thank you for supporting our efforts, for supporting poets, 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:11.430 align:middle line:90% and supporting books. 00:01:11.430 --> 00:01:14.310 align:middle line:84% On topics of support and books, Sesshu 00:01:14.310 --> 00:01:15.870 align:middle line:90% will be signing books tonight. 00:01:15.870 --> 00:01:16.920 align:middle line:90% Buy a book. 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:18.330 align:middle line:90% Gift a book. 00:01:18.330 --> 00:01:19.830 align:middle line:90% Get ready for the holidays. 00:01:19.830 --> 00:01:22.860 align:middle line:90% 00:01:22.860 --> 00:01:26.250 align:middle line:84% We have two of Sesshu's books here tonight. 00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:84% City Terrace Field Manual and we also 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:32.790 align:middle line:84% have A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport 00:01:32.790 --> 00:01:34.080 align:middle line:90% Lines. 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:36.970 align:middle line:84% He does have other books, so please check those books out 00:01:36.970 --> 00:01:37.470 align:middle line:90% after. 00:01:37.470 --> 00:01:40.560 align:middle line:90% 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:45.540 align:middle line:84% Tonight, I'm honored to introduce Sesshu Foster, poet, 00:01:45.540 --> 00:01:50.820 align:middle line:84% novelist, educator, east LA historian, and radical champion 00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:53.430 align:middle line:90% of social and racial justice. 00:01:53.430 --> 00:01:57.780 align:middle line:84% Foster holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, 00:01:57.780 --> 00:02:02.370 align:middle line:84% and once worked as a firefighter in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. 00:02:02.370 --> 00:02:04.170 align:middle line:84% It's hard not to mention that, Sesshu. 00:02:04.170 --> 00:02:09.720 align:middle line:84% I was so intrigued and a little jealous of that solitude. 00:02:09.720 --> 00:02:14.400 align:middle line:84% He's the author of Atomik Aztex, World Ball Notebook, 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:17.730 align:middle line:84% City of the Future, City Terrace Field Manual, 00:02:17.730 --> 00:02:20.730 align:middle line:84% and his most recent book of collaborative speculative 00:02:20.730 --> 00:02:25.980 align:middle line:84% fiction titled ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles 00:02:25.980 --> 00:02:29.220 align:middle line:90% Dirigible Air Transport Lines. 00:02:29.220 --> 00:02:33.330 align:middle line:84% It's impossible for me to introduce Sesshu Foster 00:02:33.330 --> 00:02:38.700 align:middle line:84% without taking us back to 1996, the year City Terrace Field 00:02:38.700 --> 00:02:40.230 align:middle line:90% Manual dropped. 00:02:40.230 --> 00:02:42.240 align:middle line:84% Just a few years out of high school, 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:47.700 align:middle line:84% I was studying poetry at a community college. 00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:50.430 align:middle line:84% A first generation Chicana struggling 00:02:50.430 --> 00:02:54.630 align:middle line:84% with self doubt and a unicorn dream of transformation, 00:02:54.630 --> 00:02:56.385 align:middle line:90% I wanted to be a poet. 00:02:56.385 --> 00:02:59.580 align:middle line:90% 00:02:59.580 --> 00:03:03.660 align:middle line:84% Here's an excerpt from the first prose poem from City Terrace 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:04.950 align:middle line:90% Field Manual. 00:03:04.950 --> 00:03:07.140 align:middle line:84% And for those who don't know, City Terrace 00:03:07.140 --> 00:03:12.930 align:middle line:84% is in LA County, California, Northeast of downtown LA. 00:03:12.930 --> 00:03:14.970 align:middle line:84% "We're home, his father sighed as they 00:03:14.970 --> 00:03:19.230 align:middle line:84% walk toward unshaded boxcars down a dusty embankment, 00:03:19.230 --> 00:03:21.870 align:middle line:84% and the boy felt inside his stomach 00:03:21.870 --> 00:03:26.400 align:middle line:84% a warm lonely pain he thought must be love." 00:03:26.400 --> 00:03:29.460 align:middle line:84% Foster's book created a space for me 00:03:29.460 --> 00:03:33.120 align:middle line:84% and my experiences growing up in the San Gabriel Valley. 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:35.400 align:middle line:90% It gave me permission. 00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:36.870 align:middle line:90% Thank you for that book. 00:03:36.870 --> 00:03:41.070 align:middle line:90% It really changed my life. 00:03:41.070 --> 00:03:46.620 align:middle line:84% About his most recent book, ELADATL, Jonathan Lethem says, 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:48.090 align:middle line:84% "It has everything that you could 00:03:48.090 --> 00:03:53.760 align:middle line:84% wish for, academic satire, crazy sculpture in the desert, sex, 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:58.680 align:middle line:84% violence, falafel, graffiti, and Zeppelin chase scenes." 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:00.660 align:middle line:90% And Lethem is correct. 00:04:00.660 --> 00:04:05.220 align:middle line:84% Foster is at his most Gonzo and Duchampian with prose 00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:09.390 align:middle line:84% that fidgets and blows by at the velocity of a raindrop 00:04:09.390 --> 00:04:15.030 align:middle line:84% shot from the gun of the wind, slight, temporal, deadly. 00:04:15.030 --> 00:04:19.350 align:middle line:84% They also create moments for the best possible questions. 00:04:19.350 --> 00:04:23.670 align:middle line:84% What's left that's worth risking your life for? 00:04:23.670 --> 00:04:27.930 align:middle line:84% And the book answers with the wingspan of a butterfly that 00:04:27.930 --> 00:04:30.300 align:middle line:90% refuses to be pinned down. 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:32.670 align:middle line:90% Poetry is worth the risks. 00:04:32.670 --> 00:04:34.980 align:middle line:90% Writing is worth the risk. 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:39.090 align:middle line:90% Non-writing is worth the risk. 00:04:39.090 --> 00:04:43.590 align:middle line:84% From the report in progress, an electro titanium dirigible 00:04:43.590 --> 00:04:45.240 align:middle line:84% on the scale of the Graf Zeppelin 00:04:45.240 --> 00:04:49.440 align:middle line:84% will appear like the rising sun over the San Gabriel Valley. 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:52.200 align:middle line:84% And when the people see what can be done, 00:04:52.200 --> 00:04:56.580 align:middle line:84% they will rise up across the nation and every dead city 00:04:56.580 --> 00:04:59.310 align:middle line:84% and wasteland suburb, the will to live 00:04:59.310 --> 00:05:04.070 align:middle line:84% and the desire to prevail, the prevailing of desire. 00:05:04.070 --> 00:05:06.470 align:middle line:84% With prose that speaks to the future 00:05:06.470 --> 00:05:09.890 align:middle line:84% by talking to the past, everything perched 00:05:09.890 --> 00:05:13.820 align:middle line:84% on sand on the edge of non-existence, 00:05:13.820 --> 00:05:17.720 align:middle line:84% Foster invites us to the field that Rumi spoke about, 00:05:17.720 --> 00:05:21.980 align:middle line:84% that one beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. 00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:24.590 align:middle line:90% We accept your invite, Sesshu. 00:05:24.590 --> 00:05:26.180 align:middle line:90% Meet you there. 00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:27.630 align:middle line:90% Everyone, Sesshu Foster. 00:05:27.630 --> 00:05:28.130 align:middle line:90% Gracias. 00:05:28.130 --> 00:05:31.480 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]