Hey, everybody, welcome.
Hello, can you hear me OK?
You can, good.
Good work, you've chosen wisely on a Thursday night
in Tucson once again, and I'm proud of you
all for being here at a poetry reading, braving the cold.
You had to get into cold cars and drive here or maybe
cold bicycle rides or cold streetcar rides.
However you got here, thanks for coming,
and welcome to the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center,
and I want to just mention a couple of quick things
before I turn things over for this very special night where
we're celebrating two readers in person, one who's
going to visit us from afar, who's here in spirit,
in person, and we're celebrating the work of an amazing Tucson
literary institution called Terrain.org.
So you know about Terrain.org?
[CLAPPING]
Good.
OK.
And I'm sure Simmons is going to tell us more about it.
I'll have a couple of things to say about it.
But that's one of our reasons for gathering tonight.
It's to celebrate the work of Terrain.org
over the past 25 years, which is a bright and shining legacy
and incredible to think of what it's
done in a quarter century of time, and so,
worth celebrating.
So we'll talk more about that, and to do that with poets
is especially exciting for us.
So many thanks to Allison for being here, for Julie,
and for Derek who's trying to be here and waylaid by flights
that have kept him away.
So if you-- one thing I'll say very quickly.
If you have not yet picked them up,
there's three piles up here, three stacks of broadsides.
Each of them are different, and each of them
feature work from the three readers.
So if you haven't been able to pick these up,
please come do so after the reading,
and they're delightful.
It should not deter you from also buying books which
is conveniently just adjacent.
So-- and there's two book-selling stations today.
So there's our U of A bookstore stacks that are over there.
They're happy to sell books to you.
And then, there are some books that the bookstore
has some trouble getting that are also for sale here.
And Mark, our excellent docent will
be happy to vend those to you.
And there are ways, I think they use cash or Venmo or other ways
to buy those.
So come buy some books after the reading.
I do want to share-- this is our first event in 2024.
If you don't get one of these in the mail,
we've got extras of these over on the table
that's around the sort of half wall by the front door.
This is our calendar for the spring season.
There are many, many good things happening at the Poetry Center
that we're so excited about.
Readings galore including next week,
we have a reading from the poet Edgar Kunz.
He'll be reading on the 18th here at the Poetry Center
that Thursday at 7 o'clock.
And then, on the 25th, we have a reading from the poet Brenda
Hillman back here at Thursday night
at the Poetry Center at 7 o'clock,
and a reading from Robert Hass on Saturday, the 27th.
This is a departure from our normal time.
So that's going to be a 3 o'clock
matinee reading here at the Poetry Center as well.
And again, that's at 3 o'clock.
So the other two are Thursdays at 7:00.
Hass's reading is on Saturday at 3:00.
And you can find all those details
on this delightful, beautifully-designed calendar
that looks good in your houses.
You can fashion some garments out of them
and just promote what is happening at the Poetry Center
wherever you go.
They're available, and they're around the corner, and help
yourselves.
You'll also learn about the classes and workshops programs
at the Poetry Center.
There are lots of--
I think there's eight different classes happening
here taught by many of the visiting writers
who are coming through.
Some of those have sold out.
Some of those still have spots.
So if you're interested in thinking about poetry more,
you can learn more about that in the calendar as well.
I want to quickly point out that across the way in the Poetry
Center, we're continuing the exhibit
that we have up right now of another Tucson
literary institution that features
Kore Press and the work that Kore Press has
done over the last 30 years, another thing to applaud.
[APPLAUSE]
These are among the many riches of this place--
are these people that are doing the work of literary production
and bringing voices into the world
and finding ways to bring language to all of us.
And so, we're celebrating what Kore Press has been
and what it's done and some of the things
that it aims towards in the future.
And so, you can come visit while the Poetry Center is open
and see that exhibit.
It's delightful.
Julie Johnson, who is one of our readers,
is also the curator of these exhibits with the other library
staff.
And so, it's one of the things we celebrate.
Come visit and see that.
So I mentioned Terrain.org.
We're celebrating 25 years of their work, which
means, if you track backwards, that Terrain started in 1997.
So if we can put ourselves in a time machine
and think all the way back to what was happening in 1997,
I know that I, at that time, did not
own a cell phone, delightfully.
I would sometimes like to go back to that time.
CD players were a luxury in cars.
I had lots of cassettes.
You might have had a lot of cassettes too.
To think of what was happening then
with a magazine that was publishing in digital spaces
is really exciting to think what it has become now.
And so, I credit Simmons with this
foresight to imagine what Terrain.org could be
and to put energy and love into it for so long to make it
into what it has become.
It's really, really exciting.
[APPLAUSE]
So if we come back to the present,
this means more than 3,000 pieces have been published
across that 25-year history.
It is the longest, still-publishing online journal
and the longest continuously publishing online journal.
So that has happened here, and it's
happened because of this foresight, this interest,
this energy, and the intersection
between the natural world and the built world
and where language sort of explores
that intersection in the work that-- and with other artists
as well.
The poet and former director of the Poetry Center,
Alison Deming, sends her regards to everybody.
She's away right now on a trip in Mexico,
but she said, please say this when you're introducing.
And Alison is a longtime board member,
I think, for Terrain, so has carried also with Simmons
about how to do this work and how to help
celebrate what Terrain might make it possible.
And in Alison's words, she says, "For its whole history,
Terrain.org has published outstanding works
for writing and visual art that celebrate the natural world,
interrogate our human place in it,
and explore how we inhabit our communities."
So we celebrate that, Alison, and thank you
for being here in spirit as well.
I want to bring up Simmons now to tell you a little bit more
about Terrain to introduce our readers.
Simmons is the publisher, the editor-in-chief,
delightful poet, Tucson literary citizen,
a great friend of the Poetry Center.
Please help me welcome up Simmons Buntin.
[APPLAUSE]
--