Hello, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you all?
Good.
[CHEERS, CLAPS]
Woo!
Great.
That's awesome.
Keep cheering.
There's a lot of good things that are
going to be happening tonight.
We're really excited about it.
I'm so pleased everybody's here.
Thank you for coming to a poetry reading in Tucson on a Thursday
night at the Poetry Center.
You've made an excellent choice.
And I want to remind you of that excellent choice.
And so there's lots--
this is going to be a special reading tonight,
and we're really excited about it.
My name is Tyler.
I work as the director here at the Poetry Center.
I want to shout out the people who
work really hard to make readings happen at the Poetry
Center all the time.
And so my colleague, Paola Valenzuela, is over here.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
And next to Paola is our friend and a student worker who
helps us out named Mars Fehmi.
And Mars is over there, as well.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Their labor makes the machine go.
We're grateful for it and really excited,
again, to be doing poetry readings
in Tucson with everybody here.
There are some that are coming up.
So I want to keep you in the loop about this.
We'll have a little bit of a break,
and then the readings will start, one each week.
And there's a stretch that's coming up.
So on October 19, the next poet who
will be back here on Thursday night at 7 o'clock
is Timothy Donnelly.
And then, after that, the next week
will be the poet Eileen Myles.
After that are the poets Adam Davis and Manuel Paul López.
After that is Sawako Nakayasu, who's
going to be the keynote for the American Literary Translators
Association.
So she'll be here doing that work
but then, also, doing a poetry reading on a Thursday night
at the Poetry Center.
And then after that is the poet Marilyn Chin,
so a great run that's coming up starting on October 19 and then
each week.
So your Thursdays are set.
Clear your calendars.
We'll see you here each time.
You can even write your name on your seat.
Don't do that.
Mentally do that.
And we're excited to see you back for all of those.
On Tuesday, October 10, coming up, we'll be--
that's a Tuesday night--
we'll be staying open a little later at the Poetry Center,
and we'll have the opening reception for our new exhibit
that's coming up.
And that exhibit will celebrate 30 years
of Kore Press and Institute.
How many of about Kore Press?
Great.
Good.
If you don't, this is your chance.
So this is a retrospective exhibit.
It's going to tell the story of the press and the press's work.
And the opening reception will start at 6:00 PM.
We're going to have a great food spread.
It's open to the public.
There'll be some remarks from Lisa Bowden, who's
been the visionary behind the press for many, many years
here in Tucson, one of our most exciting publishing efforts.
So that, again, is Tuesday, October 10.
And that's back here at the Poetry Center.
The Tucson Humanities Festival is on.
And that's happening now.
The Poetry Center is part of the College of Humanities.
The Humanities Festival is the flagship effort of the college.
Many events are happening, but the one I want to clue you into
is October 11.
So the 10th, you're going to be here for the reception.
The 11th, you're going to be at Centennial Hall.
And that night will be the Poetry of Fashion.
And so the Poetry Center has helped
curate some selections of poems that students from the U of A
will be creating ensembles around.
There will be a celebrity presence.
If you know Project Runway, Tim Gunn
will be here, looking at the work that
is created by the students in honor of these poems.
So that's October 11.
There are tickets for that event.
You can learn more about it by googling the Tucson Humanities
Festival.
It should be a lot of fun.
Many of you will have seen that tonight's reading is
named the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Reading.
And this is an annual reading that we've
offered at the Poetry Center since 2013 with the support
of a private donor.
And we do this to honor emerging and innovative poets
and to celebrate and remember Morgan's poetry
and honor his life.
Some of you here probably knew Morgan personally.
By all accounts, he was a tremendous force
in the communities in which he moved.
His work constantly calls into question as a poet,
constantly calls into question, how language
does what it might do, what it signifies and how and why
or why not, a kind of lyric logic and, by extension,
the relationship to art and experience.
He authored two books, the books Verge and Eros--
and these are both at the Poetry Center,
we'd love to share them with you--
as well as many chapbooks and pamphlets.
And we are deeply proud to honor this reading tonight
in his name.
To help us welcome the poet who's been here visiting
who will give the reading tonight
is my colleague Aria Pahari.
And I'm excited to have her up here to introduce.
If you've been to the Poetry Center recently,
you've met Aria at the front desk, where she works
as our library specialist.
We are so lucky she's there.
She's been an incredible hire and a huge lift
to all of us at the Poetry Center.
If you haven't been to the Poetry Center
recently to visit Aria, why?
[LAUGHTER]
Come visit.
She's excited to say hello to you and meet you
and to show you all the things that are there.
Please help me welcome Aria Pahari.
[APPLAUSE]