[applause] , everyone. I love coming to cleveland for the annual event i enjoy every minute standing grows and grows. Thank you for your loyalty loyalty, the support and for your enthusiasm. Give that up to yourselves. [applause] every time i think of this prize a poet in the 1930s a white to woman now one of the first if not the first prize is in celebration of what to do recall excellence and diversity. An extraordinary person anisfieldwolf and she would have been it used to be named to the black Pulitzer Prize at least up down on the cover of the saturday review in 1941, Martin Luther king himself won its coverage of the five years ago under the leadership under montagu a dear friend friend, it was transformed to focus on artistic excellence and today we use the buzz word cultural diversity. I was put on the Selection Committee and a foundation generously asked if i would be the chair. So weve restructured it and i asked my friends and my colleague and the man that i met and i asked if they would compose a jerry a jury and they agreed. And we have a good time arguing about the 400 bucks and it is a miracle. [laughter] but it takes actual people on the ground you can see rise what a prize should be and how splendid and rewarding the event should unfold but it makes people on the ground to manifest the vision. I think it is to be fitting if we all joined in celebrating and honoring someone for so many years to legitimatize the spirit of edith anisfieldwolf as she retired from this position last year because her husband was ill but we have become very good friends over the years. Those of you in the know know there would not be this marvelous events without mary louise. Please give that up. [applause] and so many people our priggish u. S. It could be just flood but i want you to miss me by realizing how important i was a your event falls apart. You know, what i am talking about. [laughter] not to be released she handpicked her successor the literary journalist karen long id we have worked with her for years who we are now in excellent hands. [applause] please stand up. So now is showtime. As many of you know, i have something of interest in to reality. Whether Technology Research natalie for ones origins but understanding them. With the best of circumstances generative but this quality that has been evidenced on every page of the third collection of paul web from Eugene Gloria my favorite warlord the winner of poetry book award. They generate a geography to map out the exploration of home and exile place a and displacement departure and arrival and ultimately a return. There are touchstones throughout. The warlord, the father, brother, the chineseamerican. Plotting points along the riders pass 35 and one name or one place or one year can resonate to give the reader Different Directions different points of the journey to. Just take the example the year 1967. That is the name that one famed for target for photographer looking for images of freaks while all of us stayed put in our small but brilliant constellation managing to escape unscathed from the cameras long days. Also the year he writes, curiously enough to which another goes to jail on trumped up charges and said t2 the allegory the laundromat also then they to 67 so important as these attest in the personal life and this is the years he thinks of with his motherinlaw in she hints be a bean cake comes to his mind as also the woman she was in 1967 giving birth to my wife. What i find it so resonant in all of these poems is the idea of multiplicity and we possess many identities from the diverse forces back to education to the comingofage in the same neighborhood and i quote janis joplin shored up supplies from the quarter tidies crusher of wind from the delightful kevin suze led to the second poet who here on earth that the poet and his wife had their favor in a Chinese Restaurant sets the tone of the volume for me. The boosted list by bright faces, time in chinese and hundreds of years on their faces its, schoolteachers and witnesses of tear Office Clerks and in the same moment at the same place we are 70 Different Things at the very same time. My favorite warlord is the third book of poetry. The first do the one published in 2000 and another published 2006 the former poet laureate said indyk demonstrates a central quality of poetry the depth of language the power to get past the First Services of words and things are to put it differently to parity harmony beyond the obvious to find a new undertones of meaning. Like that. A fulbright scholar graduate , memorial awards, National Poetry series selection and asianamerican literary award, and he has had fellowships and residencies and a Resident Artist Program it in virginia from Creative Arts this past spring he was pulling reinstate University College of arts in science distinguished fellowship. He grew up tendered his bachelors degree at stanford discussed eight his masters degree at Miami University and at the fasb to receive organ currently professor of english at Depaul University in indiana. It is with good reason my favorite warlord was the first election for a discussion in the brownback book club at the ohio center of the book at the Cleveland Public Library that each of the books will be honored tonight to the month of october. Ladies and gentlemen, for his deep exploration of origins and identity before his lyrical embrace of diversity Eugene Gloria is the recipient of the 2013 anisfieldwolf book award for poetry. [applause] indianapolis that dr. Gates mentioned earlier and i will start with that. Here on earth. Imagine the pleasure the rush of rain gutters and imagine yourself year or a restaurant on the on that street a bad neighborhood even after the reagan. Our waiter is also the proprietor to say peter it has been weeks to come to each we have been hankering for your thoughts. Come. We know we want the same meal we always order even the number one appetizer my wife and number three. I will have members 38 and number 30. The tables are that vietnamese ty and chinese in filipino in hundreds of years on their faces. Schoolteachers, witnesses and tear and readers of chekhovian Office Clerks with inner lives. Then the man with this overshirt comes in to pick up the takeout order he is tall and has pockmarks like my father in almost could be my father except for the bonterre. Over over the number one in number three appetizers were speculating with a man comes from. Manila or saigon but then comes peter with our order of steaming bowls in our faces are shaving. Said reface the lantern link fitting lengthening in here on earth near a curtain by raising a subset of the far corners floating to the center and in ireland in landlocked america we are vietnamese and filipino and we are all of us. Post exotics. [applause] the next poem is about to francisco features with sister in a very difficult white but i apologize to all ready to her in the advance about that experience it is called allegory of the laundromat. Another romance to third in one month how could she help his love would remain steadfast when he turned her secret . 1967 with the world on the brink of record snowfall in chicago astronauts burning in the space capsule and being charged of trumped up charges reciprocating a riot. Here comes the night is what my sister heard three backyards away on the rooftop. He waved his drumsticks my sister pushing for another band then ambushed then to seek refuge in spanish harlem thin to plow to kids on a porch the year my sister was almost raped at a laundromat. Saturday in San Francisco my sister negotiating between delicate tim permapress and dark socks with danger and romance. No escaping the task of laundry with loads of pardalotes she carted from the flat. She was indentured not the nuns to taken the trouble teens but to a mother at work on the weekend. When a man loves a woman who played the scratched 45 over and over from the bedroom about the flat. There was no escaping the way the man in the brown dirty jacket in and year in the laundromat that afternoon. He came from behind into the left hand across her mouth and the other on her crotch then she described as a way of a heart to the rhythm of the rinse cycle. Here comes the knife was not playing in her head but the drummer walked in on the way to the park with the black riots with all the rage and it was hotter than a mulliken july. With the flood of runaways from nebraska who does not care about the in delicate balance of the wash. [applause] i will close with this poem it is a love poem to read wife in the city of detroit. My wife carries the city like a pebble in the heel of her sock my motherinlaw in the front seat we are driving through we come here for holidays and family. In the hub of the mobile of the city nobody seems to like this. Why i cannot say for sure. Does not honor a man who observed all the cardinal rules of jim crow and cassius clay and malcolm x in 1962 and the launch were a boxer extended his arm to shake a hand. Baby the total of harlem. Maybe the photo of harlem. That paid no mind to Young Cassius clay even later from mohammad of the. Nobody likes a black man even when he is right. 1967 he said i dont got a war with the vietcong in suspended he would come around again in thin trees to testify and i tried to locate the history that they are made from the fruitwood trees handcrafted in italy and my mother bought the set. Tree branches and foliage dan rutz and finds everything is spreading across america. This woman hands be a bean cake the woman she was in 1967 giving birth to their life and the blesses car for our picnics across the Detroit River where the pass is heaped like an animal sleep on the soft shoulder of the road. [applause] thank you. I was fascinated to learn from an interview that laird hunt gave that the seeds of his novel kind one not reading on slavery of the United States or in his studies of william faulkner. Moving for freedom in india indian across the ohio river to slavery in kentucky the novel has multiple narrators with of fiscal and metaphysical shift of time and place. But in fact, with the start of this novel over the history of the caribbean slave trade in the haitian revolution, two worlds in which slavery was more brutal than human beings were seen as much more disposable dan here in the United States and that haitian revolution that african slaves and descendants successfully over through the tyrannical masters the first time in Human History. The firstever in Human History that slaves overthrew there masters to set up an independent republic. These two worlds were translated by his rich imagination by what the land to a journal constitution calls a haunting and meditation on the crushing legacy of slavery of the American South and for this profound act translation in the imagination that laird hunt is the recipient of this years anisfieldwolf book award for fiction just like the Steve Mcqueen about to be released in october kind one explores unflinchingly what the planes dealer calls this soul of america and horror jenny is taken as a new wife of her second cousin from her home to his pig farm in kentucky. The less promises of this do world evaporates immediately in the face of its violent and dehumanize the reality when his cruelty to her himself is mitigated only by the rape and torture of the two young and black female slaves. Ginny herself and flex beating on these women in she is a grotesque copy of him perversely savaging her only shredder of power by violating and further dehumanizing the slaves. After likenesses killed the slaves rise up against her and put shackles on her. Underlying the story is a sad sense there could have been sisterhood possibly there. Jetty is the same age after all and space this has beaten her and burned her books cutting her off from language and culture in the free womans version of the enslavement. But hunt never lets us forget that slavery in the ownership of one human being by another can never be anything the intimate the brutal. It has been reviewed as strike the original and deeply moving book the author calls it is continuing and gorgeous. I return to the idea of translation to think about this book. Think about it translation is an act of ideas and beliefs from one place as it were to another. Slavery forces translation to a new place at the same time and seeks to make it impossible by killing language year and killing coulter by attempting to kill any vestige of the past. Of kind one shows these vestiges always remain in the elements that give us our humanity are not so easily done away with. Kind one was a finalist for the 2013 faulkner award for fiction and is the fifth novel of laird hunt published in france japan germany spain and turkey the sixth novel never home will be published by the bow brown in the United States. It comes as no surprise that laird hunt is a translator as well of the english works into french and french works into english. Under the offer if numerous stories in reviews and translations that appear in numerous publications. With the wall street journal among other places with residencies at the Macdowell Colony in the land and foundation teaches at the university of denver in the Creative Writing Program where he edits the wellrespected journal denver court of the. He moved to rural indiana during his Highschool Years after a childhood spent in singapore where he was born then San Francisco and then to london. He has his bachelors degree at indiana university. Kind one seems to be an attempt to penetrate that misunderstanding, but corruption in this translation that slavery has brought on the country and takes us back to full centuries to put as firmly in the present with his questioning of the limits in the unrelenting the for empathy and morality for the profound assertion that these things matter if were truly to learn to live together with all of our differences, it kind one by laird hunt is the recipient of the 2013 anisfieldwolf book award for fiction. [applause] fate q. Dr. Gates it is such an honor to be here tonight. To receive this award in such amazing company. All of you with fellow recipients and my family. My father and my sister and my wife and my daughter who keeps my seat warm in the front row. [laughter] and mike d. Your friends editor is year as well. I else thinks to those people in particular. I will read from this book and give voice to the storyteller in the novel he was also held in bondage on this farm is in kentucky it is one of the characters closest to my heart who speaks story into some very dark places i hope this will excerpt in to shine some light to the dark part of this book. So this is the story of the union steve hickey held up the union then went to the counter to check out the big knife and cut off the skin. When it was skin he gave it is neff there was flour and rand bacon fat in chopped apple ends to oyster at the ready. He took a little of each and put them in a light on the counter and picked up the idea and again and turned to us. Had as accord attached to the inkle then he slept with a cord attached to the ankle in the yard in the cellar the cold spoke to him into the yard was the trees one night the minister came home with his face painted from the stage and made about him and tell everything he had struck had fallen. One would not rise and when he woke from the rage she wept and before he finished reaping the onion was. The oyster shell he cut his chord with he kept along with the piece of bacon and a pocket full of flour in he ran to the streets in his legs grew tired and he made them stronger and he continued on. The city stretched before him he ran toward the rising sun nobleman asked why he was running so he took a bite of one apple and turned her into an apple tree. Her child turned into an apple tree so he took a bite of the child and turned into a be you he broke off bits of the bacon and turned them into p. I. G. S. They were chasing after him so he cut them with the shell and when they were killed he let a fire in hong them over then he butcher then input some of them on skewers and cock their fat in the cup he heard barking city carved into a woman when he took a bite she blinked her eyes open then they ran together but she was new and fell behind so he turned her into which we give proper in the pocket the job Steve Redding said he took some of the flour and put into the air in the year began to burn the dogs ran into the fire in the mini came after them he flong more flour into the air and it filled with water and the dogs drone. He took the twig out of his pocket and turned it back into his wife. They they together on hamas and scratched their back against the bar can floated above the leaves they had barely finished win she said the men are coming in then he took a bite of his apple in the hearse split asunder then there was say cataclysms then ice smashed at the trees there was a hall in the wind but still the men came and he turned his wife into a stone put her in his pocket and turned himself into a ball and went into the wood in the onion could see his way by the light of the torch is and ever closer embroider the trees around to grow taller you spoke to him a door opened and he went into what. Inside the tree the sun was warm and there were soft grasses industry metrical by in sheep in the field and flowers blooming in the old man sat astride able to smile down at the onion in city braced a year for 10 years but never asked for more. He said that then rode away in the opinion changed itself back and pulled the stone out of his pocket. We can live here for 10 years. Yes she said. They built a small house simply to the garden and sat quietly together in the evenings and lay down on soft blankets once he tried to kill one of the sheep in the scampered away laughing so they ate that of which they grew and his wife had children one after the other in t