WEBVTT

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Hey, y'all.

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Hey.

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Yeah.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'll say, as a trans and queer
poet, what you all have created

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is just--

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I'm already teary.

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And to add to your tender
and beautiful words

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at the beginning, this
feels incredibly special.

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I wake up and it
breaks my heart,

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Cameron Awkward-Rich wrote
in his second book, Dispatch,

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in 2018.

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Today is January 15, 2026.

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And I too woke up this
morning after going

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to bed learning of another
shooting by an ICE agent

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in Minneapolis, more
kidnappings of innocent people

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by the slightly rebranded KKK.

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And I saw that the
regime and power

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is on the verge of invoking
the Insurrection Act.

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I woke up and thought
about genocide,

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my trans youth friends
losing health care.

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I woke up and I thought
about 2025 being a record

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breaking year for anti trans
legislation and violence.

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I woke up and I
thought, I don't know

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if I can let my heart
be broken anymore.

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All I wanted to do was
sleep walk through the day.

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In 2014, Black trans icon
Laverne Cox gave us a new term,

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possibility model.

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A possibility model is not
a mentor or a role model.

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A possibility model
is a person who

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lives their dreams
in public, which

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doesn't mean that the
possibility model is perfect

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or always positive or
anything like that.

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They are not the road to follow.

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They are the embodiment
of a concept,

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possible from the
Latin, that can be done,

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that may be possessed of
inherent strength, possible.

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Widen the lens.

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There's always at
least one other way.

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Shift your weight.

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My guess is that
everyone here is looking

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at least for a possibility
model for the page,

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and you will absolutely find
that tonight with both Cam

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and Franny's readings.

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But I want to actually
how both of their writing

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lifts off the page
and encourages

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us, by example, to make
eye contact with the world

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and enact the possibility
of poetry in our lives.

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That can be done.

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That may be possessed
of inherent strength.

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I wake up and it
breaks my heart.

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Cam's second book ends with a
cento, a form where each line is

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written by another person.

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It's a collage.

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It's a way of
recontextualizing words,

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but it's also a way of saying,
look at this line I found.

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I didn't write it, but I need
to share it with you right now.

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I share that poem, "Cento
Between the Ending and the End,"

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write that down if
you don't know it,

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every chance I get because of
what it teaches us about loving,

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which is to say, training
our attention on amplifying

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the brilliance of others.

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Which is to say, amplifying
the possibilities of love.

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This idea is carried forward in
Cam's third book, An Optimism,

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which introduces readers to
Pauli Murray, the Black poet

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activist, spiritual leader
and self-described he/she

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personality.

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Here Cam writes, I, we
all know, is an assembly,

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and in this assembly there
is history, nature, the body

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and the mind.

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Etymologically
speaking, optimism

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means looking toward
the greatest good.

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Again, that's not
about toxic positivity.

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It's a doctrine of
trying to create

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the best of all possible
worlds with as little

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evil as we can manage.

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What I understand about
living from Cam's work

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is that the optimism
is the assembly.

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You here, me here are
seemingly individual existences

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constantly co-creating each
other, especially here,

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as Cam writes, in this century
of wildfire, century of war

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and perfect technology of war,
where I live a happy life.

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Cam's writing gives
us possibility models

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for reimagining
time and each other.

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And if we are lucky enough
to wake up tomorrow,

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may we reflect in
the ongoing cento

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of our existence, the brilliance
of the people we love.

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May we enact our optimism.

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May we build the best
of all possible worlds

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here in this world knowing, as
Cam knows, all the arguments

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for and against my life.

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May we wake up tomorrow alive
to all of the possibilities.

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May we not sleepwalk, but rather
repeat, I woke up this morning

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and it broke my heart.

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Please welcome
Cameron Awkward-Rich.

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[APPLAUSE]

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