Thank you, Tyler.
It is such a joy and a dream manifested
to have our communities of Tucson lovers of literature
and of poetry and of our translators
here in the same space.
When you read great art or great literature,
it all looks easy, right?
Everything on the page is just, that's the way
it must have been.
And that is how I feel about working with Tyler.
Not many people say art administration
is much like art.
But that's the way it feels working with Tyler
and that we all come and say, Tyler, what if we bring Sawako,
and she does a keynote, and she does a reading
as part of the series.
And he just says, yeah, great, let's do it.
So you are the dream that is manifested.
Thank you for all being here tonight.
Sawako Nakayasu is a poet, translator, and a thinker
who I deeply admire.
And I'm so very delighted to be welcoming her
to Tucson tonight.
One reason that I am always grateful to be
in Sawako's presence is the way that her thinking opens up
space of inquiry, of possibility, of curiosity,
of unknowing, and then breathes back
into that space multiplicities.
Her chapbook Say Translation is Art
is one I return to again and again.
A few lines of hers that for some reason
I've decided to read--
"Say translation as open art practice, as open
as matter and antimatter.
Say feral translation.
Say translation oceanic as desire."
It is a beautiful chapbook, a beautiful testament
to the art that so many of us here are here to celebrate
and so many of us enjoy as readers.
Born in Japan and raised in the US,
Sawako Nakayasu is an artist working with language,
performance, and translation.
In 2016, her translation of the collected poems of Chika Sagawa
won ALTA's Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize.
Mouth Eats Color: Sagawa Chika Translations,
Anti-translations, and Originals is
a multilingual work that combines
both original and translated poetry.
Her newest books of poetry, which
I'm sure you can buy tonight, include Pink Waves, a finalist
for the PEN/Voelcker Award, and Some Girls
Walk into the Country They are From.
Both of these books engage the intersection between writing
and translation.
Sawako, welcome.
[APPLAUSE]