Hi, Tucson.
Can you hear me OK?
Yep.
All right, good.
I'm going to ask you to forgive me from reading from my notes
here.
I'm trying to keep this brief.
Thanks first, of course, to the very hard working
teams of Letras Latinas and the Poetry Center.
This has just been a fabulous visit.
And some of you know that I lived here for 12 years,
went to Pima Community College.
Some of my teachers are here.
Yeah.
And I grew up three hours from Tucson in a small mining town,
copper mining, Clifton-Morenci.
And so tonight, I'm going to read the few--
there are, I think, just a few poems
that are actually about copper mining
and what it meant to me to grow up as third-generation copper
miner's daughter.
OK.
And I'm doing that particularly because--
Joshua Keeling are you here?
I have a book for you.
Come up.
Joshua Keeling, who is your own Tucson-based composer,
approached me recently and asked about setting some of my work
maybe to some music that was commissioned--
let's see-- by the director of the University of Arizona's
community choir, Nicole Davis, and in conjunction
with the Arizona Gem and Mineral Museum.
And you all can hear these poems and then attend
that concert on April 21st here in Tucson,
if you'd like to do that.
Yeah.
And I might not be able to attend it,
but I'm looking forward to how he's put things together
because he's made some hybrid work of a couple of the poems.
So let's see, what else?
I'm going to read three of those poems from "The Accidental."
And then if there is time, I'll read
you a short section from a long poem called
"Throne" that comes from my just finished third book.
That-- yeah.
So I'll be sharing that with you if I can.
Thank you.