Hello, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you all?
Good.
This one good.
Is anyone else good?
You're good.
I was expecting you.
Yeah, the jury's out.
I'm pleased that everybody's here.
Thank you so much for coming tonight.
Nice to have a Thursday night crowd here at the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director.
I want to just say a couple of quick thank yous
and keep you in the loop about a couple of things
and give you a quick update about this reading
before we jump right into the reading itself.
I want to give a big thanks to the Borchard
Center on the Literary Arts and their work building
camaraderie through cohorts of writers from Canada, the United
States, and Mexico.
This center has helped provide some funding
to the Poetry Center for readings and our reading series.
So we're really grateful for that.
And more broadly, that work is about building bigger
connections from writers from those three
countries in a more compelling way
and building bridges between them.
So we're grateful to Michael Spurgeon for that support
from the Borchard Center.
And it's helped enable Natalia's participation tonight.
Natalia is not in the room with us tonight,
but is in the room with us tonight.
There was a visa issue.
And so she was not able to travel to be with us.
So she's going to Zoom in for the reading from Mexico City.
And we tested this yesterday, and it worked.
And we're really excited about this.
So I think Natalia can hear us right now.
So bienvenidos, Natalia.
We're glad you're here, and we're looking forward
to this reading.
There she is.
Hola, Natalia.
So we'll see you soon.
We're going to bring you in very soon.
Yeah.
This reading is also, of course--
this evening is our annual Hannelore Quander-Rattee
Reading, a reading that annually features
writers working in translation.
We've had the privilege of being able to host this reading
for the past nine years--
10 years here at the Poetry Center.
The named reading is supported by a gift in Hannelore's memory.
Hannelore was the managing editor of Prickly Pear Tucson,
a poetry quarterly.
She co-directed the Mosaic reading series
and served on the Tucson Poetry Festival committee
among many other things.
She was sort of a large actor in Poetry Center
and the poetry community in Tucson.
She wrote her own poems, and she translated extensively,
especially from the work-- from work from German.
She was fond of the work of Günter Eich
and her translation of his radio play
was produced by Arizona Public Radio.
She also worked to translate the poems of Heinrich Böll.
So it's an honor to do this reading each year,
year in and year out in Hannelore's name
and in celebration of the work that translators make possible
every day by their work.
Now, there's a couple of upcoming events
at the Poetry Center that I'm going
to keep you in the loop about.
So one is an event that's not on our print calendar,
but is on our website, and that's happening next Tuesday
here at the Poetry Center.
You may know that there are six new poetry-inspired murals
on Speedway Boulevard and through the campus
corridor of Speedway.
And so on the Tuesday, the 23rd at 5:00 o'clock, we're going
to have a walking or rolling tour of those murals.
If you're interested, there will be ice cream
and there will also be a vegan option.
So if you're interested in ice cream, vegan options for ice
cream or murals, this is your night.
And so the whole route is just under a mile in total.
It should be a lovely night.
And we're excited to share those with everyone
and talk about them a little bit.
Many of the muralists will be here to talk briefly about
that work and some of the participating poets
will be here as well.
They're really beautiful.
And then the next reading in the reading series will be on May 2.
And it's an alum reading from the MFA program.
We're thrilled about that.
It's going to feature four writers, two of whom are poets.
So Gabriel Dozal, Gabriel Palacios, and Maddie Norris,
and Margo Steines will all be here sharing their work,
and we're really looking forward to it.
Gabriel Dozal is right here, so come back for that.
That's May 2 back here at the Poetry Center,
7:00 o'clock in the States.
We are incredibly excited to have a reading tonight that
will happen in three languages.
You're going to hear Spanish, Zapotec, and English,
and it's been a season of languages
at the Poetry Center more broadly.
If you haven't had a chance to explore the exhibit that's
up in the Poetry Center right now,
it's called, Where Clouds are Formed,
and it's a collaboration also across languages
and across cultures and across peoples.
It features the Borderlands region.
And it features work that's translated into Spanish, Tohono
O'odham, and English as well, and come and visit that exhibit
and spend some time with that.
It's the exhibit that's recently launched and will
be up through August here at the Poetry Center.
And then the other part of that exhibit
that's totally separate with other work
but connected in the total exhibit's footprint
is at the Center for Creative Photography.
So you can see it in both places.
Books are for sale afterwards.
So I want you to avail yourself of those.
They're over here on my right.
If you've got extra dollars in your pockets,
that's a great place to spend them.
I also want to note that we're collaborating tonight
with the Tucson Agave Heritage Festival, which
is happening in Tucson.
It's launching even right now, continues through the weekend.
So if you take one of our print calendars
and you're so inclined afterwards
to go after the reading to Bar Crisol, 196 West Simpson,
you can get half off your first pour of a mezcal tasting,
that two companies are going to be serving there.
So those calendars are up here.
We want you to have those.
You'll get all the information you
need about the May 2 reading, and you'll get half off.
It's a great deal.
Those are right here.
It's my real pleasure and deep joy
to welcome up a colleague and collaborator, Paola Valenzuela.
If you've enjoyed readings that have happened here at the Poetry
Center, you can be assured that it
is because of Paola's creativity and her diligence and her work
as the event and development coordinator
here at the Poetry Center.
Please help me welcome her up to the podium
to tell you a little bit more about our readers tonight.
Welcome, Paola.
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