Hello, everybody.
How are you all?
Good.
Good work.
You're choosing a magnificent way to end your Januaries,
so I want to tell you thank you for doing that
and also applaud you for your incredible taste
for what to do on a Thursday night in Tucson.
Thank you so much for coming to the Poetry Center.
It's a thrill to have such a good crowd here.
To welcome back a poet from this place who's
been here many times, and it's such a thrill
to have her back in these spaces and with us, Brenda Hillman.
So thank you Brenda.
My name is Tyler Meier, and I'm the director here
at the Poetry Center.
I've just have a couple things I'll
say very quickly about things that
are coming up at the Center to keep you in the loop about.
One of them is an event that's happening just two
days from now, and that's our next reading or event that's
going to be at 3 o'clock.
So this is Saturday back here at the Poetry Center.
We don't often do events on Saturdays in this way
or at that time, but I want to make sure you know about it.
That's an event with the poet Robert Hass, who's
also here with us, which we're very excited about.
And want to tell you that event will
be focused on some translations that Bob has done
of Czesław Miłosz, especially.
And so if you're excited about Miłosz, and you should be,
and if you're not, you should come to become excited
about that work.
We'll hear more about that from Bob and some of the things
he's been thinking about.
We're thrilled about that.
That's another free event back here,
3 o'clock at the Poetry Center on Saturday.
And I hope you'll come back and join us.
Beyond that, the next reading in our series is on February 22,
and that's a partnership with the Grupo Letras Latinas, which
has done work of presenting avant-garde work by Latinx
writers and broadening the scope of how we might imagine
the continuum of that work from writers as they presented it
from the 20th century and beyond.
We're thrilled about that, thrilled
to be in partnership with the Letras Latinas many times.
It's their 20th anniversary, and the three poets
who will be coming to present with us
are Gina Franco, Sheila Maldonado, and Edgar Garcia,
and then we'll be hosted by Laura Villarreal from Letras
Latinas.
So come back to that.
That's February 22.
We're very excited about that, too.
I also want to keep you in the loop about a new partnership
that we're thrilled for between the Poetry Center
and the College of Science.
So the College of Science each year
does a lecture series where they present topics of research
from faculty members in the college.
That happens this year each Wednesday night
at Centennial Hall in the month of February.
So the first one is February 7th, and then
each Wednesday night after that, and they're each at 7 PM.
And the theme this year is surprising twists that
have come from other research.
So someone's researching one thing and discovers something
else entirely and says, this is actually exciting
and learns more about it.
So we're going to hear about that
from four different researchers on the U of A campus.
They've asked the Poetry Center to present a poet as a way
to enter into each of those presentations and lectures,
And so we're very excited to have
a poet introducing those lectures in Centennial Hall.
Our first is February 7th, 7 o'clock,
and that is with the poet Julie Swarstad Johnson, who's
here with us at the Poetry Center,
and we're really excited about that.
And the topic is about black holes,
and Julie's written a great poem about this.
So we'll have a little broadside to share with you if you come.
Those are free each Wednesday night in February.
I'm really excited to introduce or welcome up the person who's
going to say more about Brenda, and this
is the poet Jane Miller, also no stranger to Tucson,
a faculty member at the University of Arizona
for many, many years, stepped back from that role now,
author of 12 books, and most recently, the really
terrific new book, Paper Banners.
Please help me welcome Jane Miller.
[APPLAUSE]