Hello, everybody.
Welcome.
Can you guys hear me in the back?
You can hear me in the back, great.
All those thumbs up, lots of beautiful thumbs.
Nice to see everybody.
Thanks for choosing poetry on a Thursday night in Tucson.
I want to affirm you have made an excellent decision
with your time.
And we're really glad you're here.
Welcome to the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center.
And we're thrilled tonight to have Eileen Myles with us
in Tucson and to be here at the Poetry Center
to speak to everybody.
[APPLAUSE]
And really quickly, before we get going,
I just want to give us some quick housekeeping
things about what's coming up at the Center,
just so you know what's happening.
We have each Thursday for the next three weeks,
there are readings here at the Center,
right back in this space at 7 o'clock.
So on November 2 at 7:00 PM, we have the poets Adam Davis
and Manuel Paul López.
And they'll be here reading together
on the 2nd, back here at 7:00.
On the 9th, on November 9, we have
the poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu,
who will be here as the keynote of the ALTA conference.
So if you don't know, ALTA is the American Literary
Translators Association.
They're based here in Tucson.
And they're bringing their conference to Tucson this year.
So that happens November 9, 10, 11.
And it's 400 translators coming to our city.
So these are all the people that bring language--
bring literature between languages, all the languages,
moving back and forth.
And we're really thrilled about that, beautiful work.
[APPLAUSE]
You can learn more about ALTA on the-- by googling them,
American Literary Translators Association.
The conference has a fee.
And I think there's maybe still a way that someone could sign
up to come to the conference.
Maybe not?
On site, come on site.
But there are also some free events
you can learn about, if you visit the website,
and things that are happening.
So we're excited about that.
Sawako's reading here is free.
And that helps launch into the conference.
So we're excited about that.
And then on the 16th, we have the poet Marilyn Chin,
who will be here reading.
And we're thrilled about that too.
So lots of great readings coming up, all of those poets.
Many of those poets are teaching classes at the Poetry Center.
So if you're interested in having a connection with them
while they're here.
Eileen taught an amazing class last night here.
So we're thrilled about that.
Great, lots of applause, this is good.
You can learn all about those classes in these calendars.
And there's some of these that are on the table
right outside in the breezeway.
And that will tell you about those events
that I mentioned and everything else as well as the classes.
We're going to forego a Q & A tonight because we want you
especially to find the books.
So those are for sale over here on my right.
And you can find those after the reading.
And they'll be happy to sell those to you.
And then Eileen is happy to sign those afterwards.
So make sure you do that.
And then to introduce Eileen, I'm
thrilled to welcome up a friend and colleague, Raquel
Gutiérrez, a writer, journalist, poet.
Raquel is the author of the excellent essay
collection, Brown Neon.
Teaches variously at many different places.
And we're thrilled to be in community
with Raquel here in Tucson and working
with them as much as we get to.
It's a gift.
Please help me welcome Raquel Gutiérrez.
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]