Hey, everybody, welcome.
How are you all?
Good?
Woo!
That's the kind of response I'm looking for.
Can you hear me OK in the back?
You can.
Great.
OK.
Wonderful.
Glad everybody's here.
Thanks for coming so much to the Poetry Center
on a Thursday night to hear poems.
We're always excited to see folks here
at the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center.
And it's nice to see a lot of familiar faces
and some new ones too.
So gratitude to you guys for coming.
I've got a couple of housekeeping things
I want to speak about briefly.
But before I do that, I'm really excited to introduce you
to the newest staff member at the Poetry Center.
So we've just made a new hire and I
want to introduce my new friend Melissa Goodrich, who's
over here waving her hand.
And Melissa is going to help the Poetry
Center with marketing and digital strategy
and other things.
So if you're learning about things happening at the Poetry
Center in digital ways, it will be
because of Melissa's good work, and we're
thrilled that she's here with us and joining the Poetry Center
crew.
So say hi to her after the reading
and introduce yourselves.
There are lots of upcoming readings to just point to
at the Poetry Center.
You may know about these already.
If you don't, some of them have been on the Powerpoint
before the event started.
This little calendar that's on the table around the corner
here can tell you all about them.
Next week on Thursday night, we have the poet
and translator Sawako Nakayasu who's
here as the keynote of the American Literary Translators
Association Conference that's happening next week.
How many of you know about that, ALTA?
You do?
Good work.
Great.
If you don't, don't worry.
There's still time to put your hand up next time
when I ask about it.
This is a conference that's going
to bring something like 400 plus literary translators to Tucson.
So if you can imagine all the ways in which language
moves between--
literature moves between different languages, these
are the people that are doing that work.
And it's really, in a way, the kind of brain trust for this
in this country, 400 plus of them in Tucson,
and Sawako will be the keynote.
So her reading here on Thursday night will be of poetry.
And then her talk at the conference
will be about the practice of translation.
There's a little card that our friends at ALTA
have made that talk a little bit about the public facing events
that are part of the conference.
And so if you're interested in things
that you can attend or be part of while all those people are
in town, this will tell you some of those.
I know there's lots of presses and other groups
that are coming that are doing pop-up readings
and other things at different locations around Tucson.
And you can learn about those too, I think,
by keeping an ear to the ground and talking
to people who are excited about the literary translation that's
happening.
And these are the official free events on this card.
So that's also on that table as well.
Right after that, on the 16th of November,
we have the poet Marilyn Chin coming to read.
So both Sawako's reading on the ninth and Marilyn Chin's
reading on the 16th are happening at 7:00, back here
at the Poetry Center.
And we'd love to see you back for those events
and to join us as well.
We have lots of books for sale after the reading.
And so our friends from the bookstore
would be happy to sell those to you when we're done.
We're going to forego a sort of traditional Q & A.
But come up and meet Paul, and meet Adam,
and have your book signed, and connect with us
afterwards in that space.
These are two excellent poets.
And we are thrilled that they're here
in Tucson, returning to Tucson, both of them in different ways.
And to help introduce them, one of the people introducing
will be me, and I'm going to introduce Adam in a second.
But my colleague Paola Valenzuela
will be the other introducer.
And so Paola puts together all of our reading series events.
And so when she gets up to introduce Paul,
give an extra round of applause for Paola's greatness
and brilliance.