Good evening to all.
I am Geta Leseur, Associate Professor in Africana Studies
and English.
Always happy to say that and Women's Studies as well.
i see some of my students here and that's good to see.
I try to expose them to good things
and certainly this evening is one of those good things
they should be exposed to.
I really appreciate being asked to do this.
It kind of reorientates me back into Tucson.
I took courses from my Richard Shelton many, many years ago
so I have a long lasting connection with the Poetry
Center the writing program and so forth.
Did not become a poet, did not get my doctorate here
but I still feel connected to this program.
So thank you so much for asking me to do this.
Ms. Kendrick is fairly new to me as a poet I must admit that.
That not all Black people know all Black poets, you know.
There's lots of them coming out all the time
so that it is really wonderful to have this happen to me.
All right.
Ms. Kendrick is here to--
her first time she tells me.
I had a small conversation with her earlier.
She has never been to Tucson before, so welcome to Tucson.
And Ms. Kendrick was appointed poet laureate of the District
of Columbia in 1999.
Ms. Kendrick is the second person
honored with this title following the late poet
Sterling Brown who was appointed in 1984.
She is the author of the award winning poetry book
The Women Of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave
Women, published in 1989.
In 1996, a CD of music inspired by The Women of Plums
was released and Ms. Kendrick adapted the book
for a theatrical performance in Cleveland, Ohio and the Kennedy
Center.
The adaptation won the New York New Playwrights award in 1997.
Ms. Kendrick's other books are Through the Ceiling
and Now is the Thing to Praise.
Now is the Thing to Praise as a matter of fact
as a title comes from one of Ernest Hemingway's books,
For Whom The Bell Tolls, which is
a very interesting connection for me
that she would choose a Hemingway book
to take a quote for a title.
Anyway, The Color of Dusk is collaboration
with composer Wally Matthews and vocalist Aleta Green.
Won rave reviews from music critics nationally.
Ms. Kendrick's rich history of poetic contributions
to local and national publications
has earned her numerous awards and honors,
including the National Endowment for the Arts award,
the George Kent Award for Literature,
the George Kent Award for Literature.
The prestigious Anisfield-Wolf award.
An invitation from the Chinese government
to lecture at the Shanghai School of Foreign Languages.
She was the first Vira Heinz Professor Emerita
at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Chicago State University has inducted Ms. Kendrick
into the international literary Hall of Fame
for writers of African descent and sponsored by the Gwendolyn
Brooks Center there.
Her book Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner was
selected by poet/ critic Grace Cavalieri as one of the five
books, best books of poetry in 2001.
She is one of the poets invited to the National Book
festival sponsored by Laura Bush in September 2001 as well.
If you remember, that particular event
was boycotted by a lot of poets and it became a very, very
political event and there was a big article in The Chronicle
and other places about it.
She was also in July 2002 she was given a special Fulbright
award for outstanding accomplishments
in education and literature.
She has been selected to be honored for the National
Visionary Leadership project, which celebrates
African-Americans who have made outstanding contributions
to art and public life.
Ms. Kendrick was one of the original designers and teachers
at the School Without Walls in Washington DC.
She was commissioned to write a poem that
was placed on Epoch, a sculpture by Albert Paley,
in downtown Washington DC at the PEPCO building.
She also has an interesting Tucson connection.
She was commissioned to write two poems for artwork
for the New York Avenue metro station in Washington DC
and local artist and pulse sculpture Barbara Grygutis
was a collaborator with her.
So Ms. Grygutis is here tonight.
So we cherish that kind of combination here.
All right.
Celebration of her work appeared at the Kennedy Center's
Millennium stage in September 2002.
In May 2004, she received an honorary doctor of letters
upon giving the commencement address at St Bonaventure
College in New York City.
A lot of praise can be given to her work but one
that I like a lot appears on the back of this book, which
is Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner, done
by the late great poet Gwendolyn Brooks,
which it's the gloss on the back here.
And I like to read that what Ms. Brooks says about this book.
She says I put down a deal of my-- a great deal of my summer
work to read, to attend to this book.
I had to adjust to sudden shocks,
to certain [? impudences ?] of language and concept.
Dolores Kendrick has arrived at that point in her career
where she understands exquisitely what
she wants to say to you and you must
yield the time it takes a teacher
to pull it across into your own consciousness and gathering
appreciation.
Many foreign familiars!
Dolores Kendrick has mastered the little and the large.
She means it when she says, and I
quote, "I smell promises in swelling dung heaps.
I take what I can when I can get it," end of quote.
"The book is carefully large patterned, I honor that.
But I salute the book also for its amazing bits of risk
and reckoning and hallelujah."
End of quote from Gwendolyn Brooks.
Another quote is from Ethelbert Miller
from Howard University in Washington, DC, which
I liked as well.
And he says, "I read some of the new poems by Dolores Kendrick
and they took the dryness out of my soul.
Kendrick is the first lady of poetry in Washington DC.
Once again she examines the hearts of Black women.
Kendrick mixes holy water with words.
Her poems will bless you.
They will make you sing."
And I really think that's lovely language.
I think that this will happen tonight as she reads for us.
So sawubona.
Welcome.
[APPLAUSE]