How is everybody?
Great.
Good.
All right.
Can you hear me OK in the back?
You can.
OK.
Welcome.
Glad you all are here.
Happy Thursday.
Welcome to the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center.
Thrilled you guys are here for a reading tonight.
Excellent choosing of your Thursday night activities.
I commend you.
And I want to tell you about a couple
upcoming events at the Poetry Center
that we want to make sure you know about.
We'd love to see you back here for a few readings that
are coming up in March.
So this is our last.
This is a special day that we don't always
do readings on leap day.
And so this is a special thing that has been created especially
for Matthew Zapruder.
I'm kidding.
But we are thrilled that Matthew is back in Tucson
to share work with us and as a great friend of the Poetry
Center, and a thrill to have him back in this part of the world.
Coming up in March, I want to tell you.
So our next event at the Poetry Center that's reading
will be with the poet John Murillo.
John is our spring poet in residence.
So he's going to spend about 10 days with us.
Work on some new material in the Poet's Cottage.
And then do a reading for us.
And that's going to be on the 14th.
So after you're exhausted and recovered
from the Festival of Books, you'll
feel great about going to a poetry reading again.
And that will be on the Thursday of the 14th with John Murillo,
7:00 o'clock here at the Poetry Center.
On the 21st, there's a celebration
of Aurelie Sheehan, another great friend of the Poetry
Center and a writer who we lost last year,
and a great friend at the University of Arizona
and for writing in general in this part of the United States,
and broadly everywhere.
And so we're thrilled to be celebrating
Aurelie and her work.
And that's open to the public.
And that's going to be at 7:00 o'clock.
And there is probably going to be some lemonade and carrot
cake involved before that reading, if you're so inclined.
Details still to be sorted.
But please come help us celebrate Aurelie in her work
and to listen to so many that she was an influence for.
And at the end of March, we have a reading
with the poet Saretta Morgan, who has a first book coming out,
called Alt Nature.
And we're really excited about this book and this project.
That's on the 28th of March back here at 7:00 o'clock
at the Poetry Center.
And there will be an encore performance connected to that.
That book includes a kind of polyvocal section.
And so on the Friday, we're going to partner
up with MOCA Tucson.
And there will be an event where that polyvocal part of the book
will come alive with a group of different readers.
So you can hear from both parts of that Thursday night
here on the 28th at the Poetry Center, Friday
the 29th at MOCA for the performative part of that piece
as well.
Lots of great things coming up.
You can find out about all of those things
in this calendar, which will tell you nearly all of it.
And the Poetry Center website is a great place to check as well.
So if you don't have one of these,
they're available around the corner, on the table
next to the book selling station, which
is a thing to know about.
Books are for sale.
And so we hope after the reading, we'll skip a Q & A,
but we want you to come hang out with Matthew and speak with him.
So come buy a book and come speak with him afterwards.
And I'm sure that the bookstore will
be happy to sell you as many as they have.
It's a great pleasure to welcome up a good friend of the Poetry
Center, Joni Wallace, to help introduce Matthew to you all.
Joni Wallace is a great poet here in Tucson.
Her most recent collection, it's her third full length,
and it is called Landscape with Missing River.
She's a frequent collaborator with the Poetry Center
and an instructor with us.
Landscape with Missing River was the Arizona/ New Mexico Book
Award winner from last year.
And we're thrilled that Joni is here with us.
So please help us welcome Joni Wallace.
Yeah.
[CLAPPING]