Good to see you.
Can you guys hear me OK in the back?
Yes, you can.
OK.
Excellent.
That's good.
I like that.
How do you feel about poetry?
[CHEERING]
It's a beautiful Thursday.
[LAUGHTER]
Juan Felipe will do more for us.
I'm really pleased to be here tonight
to welcome you all to the Poetry Center.
It's nice to have a big crowd to help
welcome these poets to come and read
with us, to share work with us.
My name is Tyler.
I work as the director here at the Poetry Center.
I especially want to shout out the staff at the Poetry
Center who do the work of this place
and are the engines behind all the good things that happen.
[APPLAUSE]
Especially my colleague Diana Delgado and Paola Valenzuela
and Mars Fehmi who are all--
and Paola and Mars, I think, are even
doing some work getting cleaned up inside.
They're going to be out here shortly.
So they do all the work of the reading series,
and of the classes and workshops programs and other events
at the Poetry Center.
And they have helped bring Juan Felipe to come visit
with us tonight, and we're so excited about it.
It has been a really beautiful day.
Juan Felipe has met with students,
done other work at the Poetry Center,
signed about 60 copies of books, so his hand is amazingly
dexterous and fully exercised.
[LAUGHTER]
Including-- he brought a beautiful gift
to the Poetry Center that I just saw,
of a first edition of his first book which we're so thrilled
to have here in the collection and to take care of here
in Tucson.
Come visit the Poetry Center and ask to see it.
We'd be excited to show it to you.
It's beautiful.
We're going to be talking about, especially, other books and one
book in particular tonight, and I'm going to hold it up,
and it is called Akrílica.
It is an early Juan Felipe book.
There'll be more that gets discussed tonight and more
poems that are read, but Farid is especially
going to talk about this book and this project and the work
that he's done with Juan Felipe.
This is an early Juan Felipe book.
Farid will tell us more about it.
It's been represented, retranslated.
Some of the early work is in Spanish
with other context, a beautiful introduction that Farid wrote.
A wonderful interview with Juan Felipe.
So I encourage you that if you have
any gold coins in your pocket, this
is what you want to spend it on over here at the book sales
table after the reading.
This book is out from Noemi Press and Noemi Press's
executive director is here and that is Sarah Gzemski.
And so we're really excited that she's here also,
and I'll shout you out.
[APPLAUSE]
Sarah also works at the Poetry Center, so that's her side job,
is making beautiful books.
Or maybe the Poetry Center is the side job.
We're excited that she works with us.
So I'm going to introduce Farid.
Farid is going to talk about this book and project
and then bring up Juan Felipe, and they'll do some work
together at the mic for us.
Before I do that, this calendar has all the information
about what's happening at the Poetry Center.
So if you don't have one of these, this is what you want.
It'll tell you what's happening next
in our reading series, classes and workshops and other events
and programs.
A few of those that are coming up,
just so you know about them.
On March 9, we have our spring poet
in residence, Nicole Sealey, who will be here reading.
We're really excited about her presence and visit in Tucson.
She's been a part of the Poetry Center's Art
for Justice Project and written in that.
And so we're thrilled that she's able to spend
some time here and spend some time in the cottage
and in Tucson.
March 11, we have the state finals of the Poetry Out Loud
Contest.
How many of you know what Poetry Out Loud is?
You do?
OK.
Very good.
If you don't know what that is, this
is where high school age students memorize and recite
poems and it is one of the most profound
and awesome experiences, if you've not witnessed it.
And so these are the winners from across the state who
will be competing here in Tucson to have our state winner,
and that state winner will go on to the national finals.
That's Saturday, March 11 here at the Poetry Center at 1:00.
So if you're interested, that is a beautiful experience
and open to the public.
Juan Felipe's exhibit is up until March 25
so if you didn't have a chance to see the art pieces that are
here, please come in and visit.
That's available any time the Poetry Center is open.
It's a wonderful exhibit.
It's amazing to see all of the visualizations of his work
and all of the forms that have been curated for us there.
And then of course, there's this thing called the Tucson
Festival of Books happening soon and that would be remiss
if I didn't mention it, and that's the March 4 and 5
coming up really, really soon.
I'm going to introduce Farid Matuk
and I want to tell you this about Farid.
He is a writer of Syrian and Peruvian heritage.
He's lived in the US since the age of six.
First, as an undocumented person,
then as a legal resident and now as a naturalized citizen.
He's the author of the poetry collections, This Isa Nice
Neighborhood and The Real Horse and the author
of several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola.
His work has been anthologized in the Best American
Experimental Poetry and in Angels of the Americlypse:
A New Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, among others.
Matuk's book arts project, Redolent was made
in collaboration with the visual artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez
and was published in 2022 last year by Singing Saw Press.
It is also very beautiful, and we have it at the Poetry Center
so come when you're seeing Juan Felipe's books
and check that one out too.
He's a beloved faculty member here in the English department
and teaches creative writing and poetry.
A fantastic teacher, an excellent and huge friend
of the Poetry Center.
Please help me welcome Farid Matuk
to come talk about Akrílica and his work with that project.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.