Hello, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you doing?
Good.
Happy Thursday.
Glad you're here.
You're making an excellent choice for a Thursday.
And I commend you in advance.
Glad folks are here for the second engagement
that Anselm Berrigan is doing in Tucson with us
before we soon send him home back to New York.
If you were here last night and got
to hear the lecture, the talk that Anselm gave,
it was really amazing and really incredible.
So that's recorded.
And if you missed it and are interested in it,
you'll be able to see that on the Poetry Center's website
really soon and our Voca archive,
which is our archive of recorded readings and happenings that
happen here at the Poetry Center,
which I'm a little partial, but it's pretty awesome and is
a kind of history of 20th century poetry and 21st century
poetry that tracks its way through Tucson from podiums much
like this one, in fact, maybe this very one.
Before we get started, we're at the end of our fall season.
So if you've been here for other events
that have happened in the fall, thanks for coming to those.
There's a lot coming up in the spring,
but before I talk about that briefly,
I just want to-- there's lots of-- poetry centering
is a team sport.
It takes a lot of people working on this.
And I have an incredible group of people
that work at the Poetry Center.
And I think we all feel really privileged to be
able to think about and do this work together with each other,
with this community in particular.
But two people I want to point to in particular,
that labor really hard for these events
and do incredible work in every Thursday when we do events,
and I want you to help me applaud for them.
So get out your fingers, stretch them
so they can be as loud as possible.
And if you've had a good experience at any Poetry Center
event, I want you to put your hands together
for Paola Valenzuela, who works really hard to do this.
She's here with a large heart on her sweater.
And that is how I think about Paola
as a giant heart doing this work and helping all the good things
happen in the reading series and other things
at the Poetry Center.
But keep your fingers out.
I also want you to applaud for Bruno Ingram, who's
over here making things happen all the time behind the computer
and helping these readings get recorded,
and be heard, and live eventually on that archive.
So thanks for that.
I really appreciate it.
The spring season, if you were paying attention,
was scrolling through on the PowerPoint behind me,
there's a lot of really good things that are about to happen.
So we're really can't wait for that
and are excited to welcome you back in January when
those are happening.
Some of those first visits are from poets
like Franny Choi, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Eleanor Wilner
and Alicia Ostriker.
And that's just January.
So there's more to come after that.
So we'll look forward to seeing you at those events
as they come up.
Our calendars will be in the mail coming really, really soon.
And we're looking forward to sharing that with you.
Before we get there, there's a little bit of time
when the Poetry Center is going to be closed.
And I just want to make sure everybody knows about this
in case you like visiting the library, from December 15
until January 6.
So that's a time when they're going
to work on finishing an upgrade to our HVAC system.
So you might be enjoying the nice warmer temperatures
in this room, which is a small miracle to us
that it can be warmer.
There's some last things that they need to do,
and they're going to take advantage of the time
when they can be closed to be messy and be a jobsite.
And when you come back, everything will be great.
So come back in January, and everything will be great.
And we're looking forward to that.
And we're excited to welcome you back then.
In addition to the season that I mentioned,
our classes and workshops is also about to open as well.
So there's a lot of exciting classes
that will be happening throughout the spring,
starting in January, but continuing
through all the months of the spring season until May.
There is a financial aid window.
So if that might help for you to take those classes,
we want to make sure you know about it.
Very easy to sign up, you just need
to say that you would like to have that help.
We take all of those people that signal
that they would like that, and then we have a random drawing.
We have for people that get a free tuition
to a course of their choosing.
That opens on this Friday at 10:00 AM,
and then that window closes on Thursday.
And it's the one time where that's possible.
So if you're interested in classes at all,
take advantage of that window of time, jump into that space.
And we'd be excited to be able to share the classes with you.
Those classes then open to the general public on the 12th
at 10:00 AM.
And they're open until they're filled up.
Some of them go fast.
They fit in stockings really well
if you want to give them to someone over a holiday season,
to yourself, give them to yourself.
So learn about those classes on the website.
And we hope you'll sign up for those as well.
After the reading tonight, I know
Anselm would be excited to talk with you.
Books are for sale over here on my right.
So I'm sure he'd be happy to sign those.
So I hope you'll take advantage of that after the reading
and come connect with Anselm afterwards.
And then the last thing I'll say before I sit down,
it's a real pleasure to have an introduction for Anselm
from a great friend of the Poetry Center,
Gabriel Dozal, who's a lecturer here
at the University of Arizona, a great friend of the Poetry
Center, and author of the really wonderful book, The Border
Simulator.
Please help me welcome Gabe Dozal.
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, thanks.