Hi, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you all?
Good?
Great.
Can you guys hear me OK in the back?
Not too bad.
OK, very good.
Well done on your Saturday choices.
Applauding you all for choosing to be here
with us this afternoon.
It's a beautiful afternoon, and we're just so
thrilled to have a big crowd to welcome Robert Hass back
to Tucson.
We've had a great visit with both Robert Hass and Brenda
Hillman.
A terrific reading on Thursday night.
That was marvelous from Brenda.
[APPLAUSE]
So she set a high bar for the love of her life.
And we're very excited to hear from Bob today.
My name is Tyler Meier.
I work as the executive director here at the Poetry Center.
And the Poetry Center is beloved by many and very close
to my heart.
It takes a lot of energy to have a center thrive
the way this one has.
And in my life, that requires support from my family
and the people around me.
So I'm really excited.
I have a wife who's a teacher, who's busy every Thursday
night with our kids.
And so she lets me come here and do the work with the readings,
but she's here on a Saturday.
So this is my wife, Katie.
[APPLAUSE]
And I love you.
[KISSES, CHUCKLES] She's embarrassed.
[LAUGHS] So it's a team sport, and I'm
happy to be on that team.
There are two readings coming up in the month of February
that I want to keep everyone in the loop about.
Our next reading here in the Center will be back on Thursday
nights.
It's at 7 o'clock, and it's 20th anniversary reading
in celebration of the program Letras Latinas.
And so we're thrilled to be in partnership
with Letras Latinas.
They're doing events all over the country.
The program that we'll have here is
going to feature three poets, Gina Franco, Edgar Garcia,
and Sheila Maldonado.
And then we'll be hosted by an associate of Letras
Latinas, Laura Villarreal.
We're so thrilled that that's happening here
and that we're a part of celebrating
the work that Letras Latinas has done over the past 20 years.
So please come back for that.
It should be a wonderful evening.
That's Thursday night, the 22nd, at 7 o'clock
back here at the Poetry Center.
Then on the 29th--
this is one of those years where we get a February 29--
we have a reading from the poet Matthew Zapruder, who
returns back to Tucson.
And his book, his new memoir, it was just
shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
It's terrific.
It's called The Story of a Poem.
And he'll be back reading from that book,
I think, and also from his poetry.
So those are what's coming up in February.
We hope to see you back there for both of those events.
I also just want to quickly mention
that we have a really exciting partnership
with the College of Science in the month of February.
They annually do their College of Science lecture series
presenting researchers and the work
that the researchers are doing for the general public
in Tucson.
Those happen on Wednesday nights in the month of February
at Centennial Hall.
They're free and open to the public.
And this partnership that we have,
we've paired a poet with each of the lectures
from the scientists.
And we're really pleased to have that invitation
and to bring poetry into the science spaces
where they live naturally, but also, we sometimes forget.
And so we reinsert.
So the first reader-- and that will be on February 7.
The topic is on research in black holes.
And the poet is our own Julie Swarstad
Johnson from the Poetry Center.
Later in the month, we'll hear from the poets
Bojan Louis, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Katherine Larson.
And we're really excited about that.
So come see us at the College of Science lecture series as well.
All of these events, the College of Science events,
that's on their website.
The poetry events is on our information and our website.
This calendar, which is available around the corner,
will tell you all about it.
So if you don't have one of these
and want to know what's coming up and how you can participate,
this is what you need.
And we'll be happy to share them with you.
And so you can find them right around the corner
after the reading.
Conveniently, right next to it are
the books that are for sale.
So if you've brought any extra dollars in your pocket,
this is a great time to spend them.
And I'm sure that Robert Hass would
be willing to come up and sign and speak
with you after the reading.
So hope you'll take advantage of that opportunity.
To help welcome our visiting poet,
I want to welcome up a great friend of the Poetry Center,
former Poetry Center Director, a Regents Professor,
and emeritus here at the University of Arizona,
Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of two forthcoming books
in the next year, the editor of one,
the editor of the anthology The Gift of Animals:
A Celebration of Animals and the People Who Love Them.
So a book about the creatures of our world and poems
that describe them and bring them to life and language.
And then a new poetry collection--
Blue Flax and the Yellow Mustard Seed.
Please help me welcome Alison Hawthorne Deming.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks as always.
Good to see you again.
Thanks so much.