WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.928 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:02.928 --> 00:00:06.680 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.680 --> 00:00:07.340 align:middle line:90% Hey, everybody. 00:00:07.340 --> 00:00:09.380 align:middle line:84% It's my great pleasure to welcome 00:00:09.380 --> 00:00:12.800 align:middle line:84% poet and translator Charif Shanahan to the Poetry Center 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:14.390 align:middle line:90% and to Tucson. 00:00:14.390 --> 00:00:18.140 align:middle line:84% Charif is the author of "Into Each Room We 00:00:18.140 --> 00:00:21.740 align:middle line:84% Enter Without Knowing" and the recent "Trace Evidence." 00:00:21.740 --> 00:00:23.870 align:middle line:84% His work has been recognized and supported 00:00:23.870 --> 00:00:26.480 align:middle line:84% by a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:28.880 align:middle line:84% the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, 00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:31.850 align:middle line:84% a Fulbright senior scholar grant to Morocco, as well 00:00:31.850 --> 00:00:35.720 align:middle line:84% as with residency fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation, 00:00:35.720 --> 00:00:39.620 align:middle line:84% Hawthornden Foundation in Como, Italy, the MacDowell Colony, 00:00:39.620 --> 00:00:41.330 align:middle line:90% and others. 00:00:41.330 --> 00:00:44.270 align:middle line:84% Born in the Bronx, Shanahan traces his lineage 00:00:44.270 --> 00:00:47.390 align:middle line:84% on his mother's side to Morocco, a country that 00:00:47.390 --> 00:00:49.760 align:middle line:84% has been the site as we might hear tonight 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:51.980 align:middle line:84% of some of Shanahan's most pivotal living 00:00:51.980 --> 00:00:54.470 align:middle line:90% and studying and writing. 00:00:54.470 --> 00:00:58.310 align:middle line:84% To honor that lineage, I want to start with a few lines from 00:00:58.310 --> 00:01:02.340 align:middle line:84% francophone Moroccan poet Mohammad Khaïr-Eddine. 00:01:02.340 --> 00:01:04.290 align:middle line:84% These are some of the opening lines 00:01:04.290 --> 00:01:07.770 align:middle line:84% of the book Scorpionic Sun, sometimes translated 00:01:07.770 --> 00:01:09.930 align:middle line:90% as Arachne Sun. 00:01:09.930 --> 00:01:13.410 align:middle line:84% And this version is from the French 00:01:13.410 --> 00:01:14.970 align:middle line:90% translated by Conor Bracken. 00:01:14.970 --> 00:01:17.690 align:middle line:90% 00:01:17.690 --> 00:01:21.920 align:middle line:84% "I'll start again at zero if I have to. 00:01:21.920 --> 00:01:25.730 align:middle line:84% Here is a window opening on me, an eye 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:31.330 align:middle line:84% open, showing this vast and wasted land." 00:01:31.330 --> 00:01:34.300 align:middle line:84% Another Moroccan writer, Tahar Ben Jelloun, 00:01:34.300 --> 00:01:39.280 align:middle line:84% counted Khaïr-Eddine along with Kateb Yacine and Aimé Césaire 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.710 align:middle line:84% as the three writers who most, quote, 00:01:41.710 --> 00:01:44.650 align:middle line:84% "grabbed hold of the French language with a violent 00:01:44.650 --> 00:01:48.270 align:middle line:84% passion, who were able to rattle and enrich 00:01:48.270 --> 00:01:51.670 align:middle line:90% the colonizer's tongue." 00:01:51.670 --> 00:01:55.730 align:middle line:84% No, decolonizing is not a metaphor, 00:01:55.730 --> 00:01:58.790 align:middle line:84% but it is a proposal emerging from the place 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:01.690 align:middle line:84% where land and consciousness meet. 00:02:01.690 --> 00:02:06.190 align:middle line:84% Not in ownership, but in relation. 00:02:06.190 --> 00:02:08.199 align:middle line:84% Charif Shanahan's "Trace Evidence" 00:02:08.199 --> 00:02:11.440 align:middle line:84% shows me that to get closer to that place, 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:17.080 align:middle line:84% poets will find their own way to rattle the colonizer's tongue. 00:02:17.080 --> 00:02:24.480 align:middle line:84% Quietly, deliberately, directly, Sharif starts again and again 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:29.840 align:middle line:84% at the same zero where Khaïr-Eddine finds his footing. 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:33.110 align:middle line:84% Quote, "to inhabit the present moment that agitates me 00:02:33.110 --> 00:02:36.250 align:middle line:90% into fleeing," Charif writes. 00:02:36.250 --> 00:02:39.430 align:middle line:84% But he knows well enough that the coping scripts we learn, 00:02:39.430 --> 00:02:42.340 align:middle line:84% the scripts of mindfulness, for example, 00:02:42.340 --> 00:02:47.080 align:middle line:84% are sometimes not enough to pacify the zero of witnessing 00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:50.260 align:middle line:90% or the zero of exile. 00:02:50.260 --> 00:02:52.810 align:middle line:84% As Charif writes, "Home was not a place 00:02:52.810 --> 00:02:58.480 align:middle line:84% in any sense, an idea defined by its absence." 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:03.370 align:middle line:84% Khaïr-Eddine writes, "Here is a window opening on me. 00:03:03.370 --> 00:03:05.890 align:middle line:84% That window's transparency and visibility 00:03:05.890 --> 00:03:08.200 align:middle line:84% can let in the light, but they can also 00:03:08.200 --> 00:03:13.050 align:middle line:84% mark a body's availability to surveillance." 00:03:13.050 --> 00:03:15.540 align:middle line:84% Charif rattles a language without having 00:03:15.540 --> 00:03:20.430 align:middle line:84% to do violence to the syntax or grammar of its surface. 00:03:20.430 --> 00:03:23.520 align:middle line:84% He rides a language to enter the most intimate grief 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:26.760 align:middle line:84% of a colonized and racialized and gendered person's 00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:29.000 align:middle line:90% experience. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:35.050 align:middle line:84% Quote, "I prepare for the hour I lose by preparing." 00:03:35.050 --> 00:03:37.000 align:middle line:90% I'm going to read that again. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:42.030 align:middle line:84% "I prepare for the hour I lose by preparing." 00:03:42.030 --> 00:03:46.350 align:middle line:84% Few lines of verse have rattled me more than that one, 00:03:46.350 --> 00:03:49.890 align:middle line:84% naming so succinctly the way surveillance becomes 00:03:49.890 --> 00:03:54.620 align:middle line:84% internalized as vigilance, and the grief and helplessness 00:03:54.620 --> 00:04:00.560 align:middle line:84% of marking how much living has been lost to that labor. 00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:03.320 align:middle line:84% And where Khaïr-Eddine writes, quote, 00:04:03.320 --> 00:04:07.380 align:middle line:84% "And I open showing this vast and wasted land." 00:04:07.380 --> 00:04:11.910 align:middle line:84% I think of Charif reminding us that an officer's chokehold 00:04:11.910 --> 00:04:17.880 align:middle line:84% seeks to induce, quote, "an unconscious state, even death." 00:04:17.880 --> 00:04:19.842 align:middle line:90% Charif is open. 00:04:19.842 --> 00:04:21.899 align:middle line:84% Open enough to stand in the overlap 00:04:21.899 --> 00:04:24.840 align:middle line:84% between the unconsciousness, the state 00:04:24.840 --> 00:04:28.110 align:middle line:84% would force on a body it seeks to dominate, 00:04:28.110 --> 00:04:30.510 align:middle line:84% and the unconsciousness Charif himself 00:04:30.510 --> 00:04:33.240 align:middle line:84% courts as a state of mind that would 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:38.350 align:middle line:84% hold the news of such violence at bay. 00:04:38.350 --> 00:04:44.370 align:middle line:84% Charif loves us enough, respects us enough to not end 00:04:44.370 --> 00:04:48.120 align:middle line:84% "Trace Evidence" with resolution. 00:04:48.120 --> 00:04:52.110 align:middle line:84% Charif opens his spirit in ours to show us 00:04:52.110 --> 00:04:57.410 align:middle line:84% the vast and wasted land inside and to remind us while we're 00:04:57.410 --> 00:05:01.010 align:middle line:90% all there, we are not alone. 00:05:01.010 --> 00:05:02.840 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Charif Shanahan. 00:05:02.840 --> 00:05:06.190 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]