Hey, everybody.
How's everyone?
Doing OK?
You've braved the rain.
Good work.
Thanks for doing it.
Glad to see you here on a Thursday
night at the Poetry Center.
We are near the end of our fall season at the Poetry Center
and so excited about that.
And also excited for everything that looms, that's coming up.
So there's a lot of things that are going
to begin again in January.
But before we get there, there's one other important thing
that's happening and that's the Anselm will be back tomorrow
night, reading from his poems.
And so we hope you'll come back tomorrow night here
at the Poetry Center, 7:00 o'clock, to hear Anselm read
from his poems and from his newest book,
out from books last year.
And in January, some things you can look forward to that
are coming up, there's the whole spring season,
and that will include readings from Cameron Awkward-Rich
and Franny Choi, and then also from Eleanor Wilner and Alicia
Ostriker, and then on and on from there.
So lots of good things coming.
If you're not on our mailing list,
I want to make sure you know about those things.
I encourage you to go to the Poetry Center's website
and join the mailing list, which is
on our newsletter at the bottom of the page.
Also, you can leave us your mailing address.
We'll send you our beautiful calendar,
which will delight your fridge.
And you can hang it up there prominently
to never forget when good things are happening at the Poetry
Center, which is most Thursday nights in Tucson, including
Wednesdays, tonight.
We're really lucky for this.
This is going to be a lecture this evening.
This is offered in partnership with the Bagley Wright Lecture
Series, a group with whom we've collaborated
with in the past at the Poetry Center.
And this is a series that works with poets.
And they want to especially support their contemporary work
and support them as they explore in-depth ways
their own thinking about poetry and poetics,
and then to give a series of lectures
that result from the different investigations that they do.
And it's a complete joy to have Anselm Berrigan back in Tucson
to give a lecture to us tonight.
And I'll let him tell you more about that when he comes up here
in a moment.
To help us introduce Anselm, I want
to help welcome up Claire Hong, who's
a great friend of the Poetry Center, one
of our great collaborators who works on many of our youth
programs, working with young people in Tucson
and in our school system, among many other things that Claire
does.
She's also one of the best gardeners that I know.
And so if you're having trouble growing anything,
talk to Claire.
She's the author of the book Upend,
which was longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award, many grants.
She was a Stegner fellow.
Please help me welcome our good friend, Claire Hong.
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
[APPLAUSE]