Hey, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you doing?
Good.
Happy Thursday.
People are OK?
Good work.
You can hear me OK in the back?
Good.
OK, good.
Thank you.
My name is Tyler.
I work as the director at the Poetry Center.
Thanks, everybody, for coming out for a poetry reading
tonight.
We're thrilled to have Niki Herd back in Tucson.
A round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm sure she'll tell you more about that,
but it is exciting to have Niki come back.
to I'm going to introduce Niki shortly,
but I want to say a couple of things
at the beginning of the reading to orient to tonight.
And first, I just want to start with some things that are coming
up at the Poetry Center next.
So our next reading at the center
is with the poet Divya Victor, and she's
going to be our spring poet in residence.
Her reading is going to be on March 6 back here at the Poetry
Center, and that's going to be at 7:00.
So hope to see you back for that, behind her beautiful work
and exciting work.
So put that on your calendars, if it's not already there.
And if you need information about those calendars
and events, our calendar of events,
the paper copy is in the breezeway on a table outside.
You can grab one of those to stay abreast
of what's coming up, and all of the info
is at poetry.arizona.edu.
After that, there's a thing that happens in Tucson
called the Festival of Books.
And there's lots of great poets that are coming this year,
and so I hope you'll come to that if you're interested.
This is truly a great year for poetry in the festival,
so pay attention to what's happening there.
That's on March 15 and 16.
More on the main mall of the campus.
But many good things happening.
And then we will be launching the Tucson
launch of the anthology, Like a Hammer:
Poets on Mass Incarceration.
And this is a book that's edited by Diana Marie Delgado, who
is no stranger to any of us here in Tucson,
and a former colleague here at the Poetry Center.
And that project collects work from the Poetry Center's Art
for Justice Project.
So if you were able to hear any of that
work when poets were commissioned
to think about the intersection of the crisis of incarceration
in the country and the imaginative life of language
and where those two things intersect.
We had some amazing poems that were read here
as part of that project.
Those have been brought together for the anthology.
The anthology comes out shortly from Haymarket Books,
I think on March 4, exactly.
And so that Tucson launch here will be on March 20,
back at the Poetry Center.
And three of the poets in Diana--
will be here to talk about the project.
Then back here at 7 o'clock, Thursday, the 20th,
the poets are Sin á Tes Souhaits,
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and Roque Raquel Salas Rivera,
and Diana Marie Delgado.
So come back for those, lots of good stuff coming up
at the Poetry Center and for poetry in general in Tucson.
I also really want to make sure everybody
knows about a different event that's happening on March 8.
And this will be a Saturday at the Poetry Center at 11:00 AM.
There's a few exciting things happening that day,
so we'll be celebrating the acquisition of our 60,000th book
at the Poetry Center.
That's a big thing.
[APPLAUSE]
I think I've read 0.0000001 of those,
but we're delighted that they're all here.
And I hope you are, too.
And so we're thrilled that work of collecting
continues in earnest, and as part of the Poetry Center's
legacy.
The book that will be the 60,000th book is called Rescuing
Q. It's by a book artist named Suzanne Moore.
She'll be talking about that project,
both its artistic and political import
and the intentions behind it.
It's a beautiful book.
And so the day will be a chance to check out that book,
hear from Suzanne, and learn about it.
It will also be a day, where we'll
be celebrating one of the most important volunteers
in the Poetry Center's history, Tony Luebbermann, who
happens to be right up here in the front row.
[APPLAUSE]
Tony has done just about everything,
and I'm worried he'll soon be the executive director
of the Poetry Center.
But we'll be having cake and lemonade,
and we'll be announcing a new space at the Poetry Center
that we're going to be calling the Tony Luebbermann Welcome
Area.
So that work with Tony, we're so excited to celebrate the work
with the 60,000th book.
And we'll be talking a little bit
about the new strategic direction
at the Poetry Center, which we're calling
the belonging initiative.
And we'll be thinking a lot about how poetry
can work as a force to build the conditions for belonging more
broadly in our own lives and in the lives that we're
making with each other in the communities where we live.
It's work that we're so excited about here at the Poetry Center,
and so we'll learn more about that as well.
That's all on Saturday, March 8 at 11 o'clock
here at the Poetry Center.
And if you love basketball, there
is an important basketball game after that.
And we promise we'll be done in time,
we will be able to watch that.
And if you don't love basketball,
don't worry, it'll all be OK.
You'll just get cake.
We're going to skip a Q and A this evening,
but there are books for sale.
And I know Nikki's really excited to sign books,
if you might be interested in purchasing one.
And so after the reading, you can look forward
to that, if you're inclined.
This reading tonight we offer in memory of a poet named
Morgan Lucas Schuldt.
How many of you knew Morgan Lucas Schuldt?
You did.
If you don't, I'm going to encourage you,
please read the work.
There's amazing poems from this poet.
Two really amazing books, a book called Eros and a book
called Verge that are both in the Poetry Center library.
Morgan was a poet and a publisher here in Tucson.
Passed away in 2012 at the age of 33.
In addition to those books, there
were many chapbooks and poems that
were published across more than 30 journals,
both in print and in online.
He practiced a beautiful and inventive poetry, and the legacy
of that work, and his work as an editor and as a mentor
and as a friend continues in Tucson.
And so we offer this reading tonight in his spirit
and in his memory.
And it's a joyful thing for us to do so.
And it's brought many wonderful poets to Tucson.