(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, the Poetry Center celebrates a new milestone in its already astounding collection.

(Richard) Poetry will always, I think, stay slightly ahead of the masses.

So it's evolving, it's constantly evolving.

(Tom) Tucson honors the agave plant and all of its manifestations.

(Vinik) You cannot know a product only after you have tried it many, many different times.

(Tom) And a tiny home development for an often overlooked part of our community.

(Alexis) It is just not like a program, it's a community of people and we all like to help each other out.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara and we're joining you from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to the largest collection of poetry west of the Mississippi.

And we're going to share a story from 2017 back when this center acquired their 50,000th book.

And right after the story we'll be back here to share the latest milestone in their collection.

(Tyler) Wallace Stevens calls poems or poetry a preserve for the imagination, and sometimes I think of the about The Poetry Center as a sort of physical manifestation of that.

Sort of a national park for the imagination.

♪ SOFT GUITAR MUSIC (Narrator) The University of Arizona Poetry Center has been located in this building on campus in Tucson since 2007.

It was built to be a permanent home for poetry in this community.

It's doors and massive library are open to anyone free of charge, you don't even need an ID to go in and read.

(Tyler) People I think do see the facility and think, oh that's new, this is a new place.

It's a longer and prouder history than just the facility.

(Narrator) Richard Shelton was at the U of A in 1960 when the center was just an idea.

He and his late wife Lois played a critical role in it's formation.

President Harvill called me in to his office one day, and he said the Walgreen heiress, Ruth Stephan, is giving the University a lot with a small house on it, and she wants to establish a Poetry Center.

She's going to supply books to duplicate her poetry library in Greenwich, Connecticut.

(Narrator) One of the most influential poets in American history, Robert Frost, traveled to Tucson to dedicate the center in 1962.

From the very beginning, the thrust of The Poetry Center was about the collection, and about poets, and making a space for them here in Tucson here in the desert.

(Narrator) The collection started in this cottage, and with the help of an endowment, acquired new books at a pace, that, at times, was difficult to contain.

(Richard) There was awhile when we really didn't have enough staff to receive the books and catalog them in, and all that, it's a lot of work.

One time I took over as director, and the previous director had boxes of books stacked in the hall.

(Tyler) We're buying about 1200 books a year.

We subscribe to about 250 literary journals.

I think it's remarkable that that sort of visionary gift with sort of creative librarianship consistency routine effort done over time has grown into one of the largest poetry collections in the country.

(Narrator) The collection focuses on poetry, from 1960 to the present day, and is indeed one of the largest collections of poetry in the country.

This rare book is a special acquisition for the center.

(Wendy) It's called Trees, and it's built on a poem by W.S.

Merwin, former U.S. poet laureate, he has visited The Poetry Center many times over the decades.

This is a special book to us because it's very beautiful, it's a milestone for us to have reached 50,000 books.

The book is designed to fold out so that it can be experienced in a multitude of ways.

The lines of the short poem are woven into the pages, and that's really appropriate, because the poem itself is about relationships.

When I think about the significance of the 50,000th book to the Poetry Center, I also think in terms of relationships.

Merwin is very well beloved, and his longtime affection for Tucson has meant that there are a lot of ties between the Poetry Center and Merwin's work.

(Narrator) W.S.

Merwin is one of many influential poets to visit the Poetry Center, as part of the reading, and lecture series that started in 1962, and continues to this day.

(Richard) We had readings, basically that was what we did, and we brought in poets from far away, and from all over the world actually.

(Narrator) The center has hosted over 1000 poets, including 27 U.S. poet laureates, 40 Pulitzer Prize winners, 35 National Book Award winners, and four Nobel laureates.

(Tyler) So it's not facetious to say that there is a way in which the 20th century of American poetry tracks through Tucson.

It's almost easier to say who hasn't been here to get a sense of who has been here.

(Narrator) If you can't make it to the Poetry Center in person, you can still explore it's rich history online.

- This is Voca.

Voca is our online audio, video database of recordings that we have been making of our reading series, and the reading series goes back to 1962.

We started making recordings in 1963.

We have, at this point, over 800 recordings on it.

In most cases on Voca, we have broken down each track by poem title.

If the poem has been published, we try to note where it was published, and which book it's in, so that ties the Voca archive very firmly to the collection.

In most cases, you can hear a poem, and then go read it right here in the library.

(Narrator) On this night, the center is hosting a reading by Layli Long Soldier and Timothy Yu.

They're both internationally recognized emerging poets who address social issues in their own way, they draw a large crowd.

(Timothy) Thank you all for being here, thank you to everybody at the Poetry Center.

I imagine perhaps you all are accustomed to this space existing, but coming here, and seeing this space, and seeing all the folks here is just astonishing for a poet.

(Narrator) Yu's book,100 Chinese Silences, rewrites work from influential poets who have unfairly fematized China.

His humor can be disarming, but his work has a serious edge.

(Timothy) I am a cicada floating in a coffee cup on the desk of the poet laureate.

Grant proposals are being written, many bottles of Napa wine are emptied, but even when his nodding head strikes the desk like a bobbing Buddhas, I lurk silently inside my mug.

Chipped by the teeth of Ezra Pound.

[ APPLAUSE ] (Layli) I'm very happy to be here, and thank you for the invitation.

(Narator) Long Soldier is reading from her 2017 book, Where As, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

I am a citizen of the United States, and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

(Narrator) Her poetry directly addresses the U.S. government's official apology to Native Americans.

I did not desire in childhood to be a part of this, but desired most of all to be a part, a piece, combined with others to make up a whole.

Some, but not all of something.

In Lakota, it's Hunka, a piece or part of anything.

(Richard) Poetry will always, I think, stay slightly ahead of the masses, so it's evolving, it's constantly evolving.

(Tyler) It's a difficult world, and I am righted by poetry often, and I think having spaces where words are valued, and language is held up as an especially important thing, gives me some sense that there's a way forward.

(Narrator) That belief Tyler Meier has in poetry, and The Poetry Center was recently rewarded.

The Art For Justice Fund gave the center a $500,000 grant to explore mass incarceration.

The largest grant in the center's history.

Richard Shelton is no stranger to this subject.

He's been teaching poetry in prisons for years.

(Richard) I find it hard to believe actually that anybody would give that money, and I'm delighted and I hope that the emphasis can be on working with incarcerated people.

(Narrator) With a rich history, and recent success, people across the country see the Poetry Center as a model for how poetry can stay a part of our lives, and collective consciousness.

It's hard to get great big support for poetry, and just one look at the center, just the opportunity to walk around the center, and to see how it promotes the art is enough to give people like me faith that we can build centers like these throughout the nation, and we should.

(Amy) The Poetry Center is part of a larger poetry coalition, and it's nice to see poetry organizations like The Poetry Center here taking a leadership role, and working together around the country to foster poetry, and build audiences for poetry.

So I can only see it growing.

(Tyler) Ultimately, we're beings based in language, and I think how we talk about the things that matter greatly to us largely defines our relationship to them.

Poetry has a lot to offer, and how we might imagine new language for how we think about these things, and if we can imagine new language, I think then we can imagine new kinds of relationships with these challenges, and that's part of the future that we're excited to be a part of, and we're excited for the role that poetry might play in helping shape that.

♪ CALMING AMBIENT MUSIC (Tom) Richard Shelton, who was featured in that last story, died on November 29th, 2022 at the age of 89.

He is fondly remembered as the poet laureate of the Sonoran Desert.

Well, joining us now to talk about the latest milestone for the Poetry Center is Library Director, Sarah Kortemier.

Before we get to that Sarah, we just saw you in the previous story and since we saw you last time, in a new haircut and a new title here.

- Indeed, yeah.

I have been very privileged to serve since 2018 as the Library Director here.

And it's such an incredible joy to be surrounded by this collection and to get to help to steward it for future generations.

- And now we're talking 60,000 books, this one like many, very, very special.

Tell us about that.

(Sarah) So this is a book called "Rescuing Q- Quandaries and Queries."

It's by a book artist named Suzanne Moore, and she is a calligrapher, whose work I have admired for many, many years and I've been kind of looking for the right book or the right project of hers that would be a good fit for our collections.

And when I saw this book, I said, oh, that's the one.

That's my 60,000th book.

And what she's done in this book is to muse on the letter Q in calligraphy form.

She's done an incredible amount of work with various types of artistic processes.

Each page looks different.

And then she sourced the queries that are in the subtitle of the book.

She sourced the questions from her friends and family, who posed questions that don't always have answers, but is really interesting to think about them.

For example, (Sarah) "Can a mirror keep a secret?"

[ TOM LAUGHS ] - We wish they would sometimes.

- Sometimes, you know, my mirror doesn't keep enough.

"Who do you think you are?"

[ LAUGHS ] (Sarah) "Is this all a dream?"

And so when I saw this I thought it would be a good fit for our collection.

Especially because these questions are incredibly poetic.

(Sarah) They're very concise, they're really unusal questions.

"What is it like to sing beautifully?"

The thinking about that puts you into an art space.

It puts you into a creative space, it puts you into an imaginative space.

And so, this book struck me as an incredibly poetic book, and because Suzanne made it it is also a book that is really well suited for our 60,000th because Suzanne is a local artist.

This was made using Cave Paper, which is a locally based paper maker here in Tucson and bound by Lone Goose Press in Bisbee, Arizona.

So there's all kinds of traces of the local arts ecosystem in this book and we are incredibly excited to have it here as our 60,000th.

(Tom) I can see how excited you are There are other exciting and rare books in your collection that people are able to walk in here and see.

- Absolutely.

So the majority of our collection is open stack as you can see around us.

(Sarah) Anyone can come in and wander through the collection, browse, read, but we also have a rare book collection that is full of books like this that are either very beautiful or very scarce or they're produced in very small editions that you cannot find everywhere.

And to access those, all the public has to do is to ask me or one of the library staff.

We'll have to fill out a little form just to make sure you can handle the books safely, and then we'll bring it out for you from the rare book room.

So the public has access to this any time we're open.

We're so proud to be able to steward these books so that everyone can access them.

(Tom) To hear our entire interview, please go to our website azpm.org/arizonaIllustrated or follow Arizona Illustrated on Instagram, X, or Facebook.

The agave is a staple of the Sonoran Desert.

They support pollinators and they have a strong culinary tradition.

But what does agave taste like and why is it so culturally important to this region?

Well, that's what participants in Tucson's annual Agave Heritage Festival come to find out.

♪ SOFT MUSIC (Jesus) This thing has been burning for 5 hours, we don't want to let it cool down.

Want to keep that heat as much as possible.

So we're just going to get ready to cut a couple of this in half.

Nice!

There's a lot of things to keep in mind.

(Maegan) A lot of our O'odham people, our O'odham youth don't know our traditional ways.

But this moment, we're reviving it.

We're living it, we're breathing it.

We're living in this process.

(Jesus) We put together this program to demonstrate, hands on the roasting of agave.

That involves finding the agaves.

Some of them, we grew them here at the Mission Garden.

Some of them are in people's backyards.

Some of them were in the neighborhood near the Mission Garden, where we had to ask permission, of course.

Here, we're going to try to break this in half.

It's going to be a challenge.

And today was the day to prepare the agaves, clean the leaves and prepare what we call the piñas, or the cabezas, the heads, the hearts of the agave.

We put a firepit since early this morning to essentially heat these rocks.

And then we throw in the agave heads and we cover it up and it's going to be there for three days.

When you cover it, we just use an old washing machine cover it.

In Mexico they use the hood of a truck.

Anything that you could find.

Cover it put some dirt on top of it and you're done.

One person can do it in 15 minutes.

(Meagan) After three days of just being covered up, Undisturbed, we just leave it alone.

Let it do its thing.

(Jesus) This is a lot of work.

You have to go and collect the the agave, the heads or piñas.

(Meagan) We'll come back on Sunday evening.

♪ BRIGHT GUITAR MUSIC ♪ Clear the dirt off, Take that, back end of the washing machine off (Jesus) In a little bit, You should be able to smell it.

(Meagan) Take the leaves out.

Take the rocks out.

And our hearts should be a beautiful, brown, roasted piece of food.

(laughs) (Jesus) And then we're going to get them out and we're going to see what happens.

We want to taste them and eat them.

You're going to chew on it and suck on it and spit out the fibers, you do not swallow the fibers.

It's like sugar cane.

Just like that.

♪ GUITAR MUSIC ♪ (Jesus) My father as a young man was Mescalero.

He was making mezcal, mezcal bacanora, to sell in the town in a place called Baviácora, Sonora.

He talked all the time about how mezcal was made, and every once in a while he would bring chunks of roasted agave, and it's basically like candy.

It's a it's a it's a morsel.

It's something that any kid would just devour because it's just good stuff.

I feel fortunate that to me, this is a flavor of my childhood.

[ SUNLINK KLAXON ] (Event speaker) Tequila is just one type of mezcal is a mezcal industrialized with one type of plant, one type of yeast, and one industrialized process.

(Event speaker #2) The first one was a pineapple based tepache, pretty traditional with cinnamon and clove, and I use agave syrup instead of cane sugar as the sweetener.

(Event speaker #3) They're catching water and collecting microbes that ferment in the leaf bases as that water trickles down the leaves.

So you actually have a plant that's a fermentation microbe collector.

Don't think of agave just as a plant.

(Vinik) We have a very intimate relationship with our landscape through food and with the external landscape, but also with our internal landscape.

Sometimes they cannot be explained.

The flavors, the aromas, they are rather felt deeply felt.

You cannot know a product only after you have tried it many, many different times.

And people, when I ask them, what does mezcal taste like?

They say all the time.

Maguey.

Maguey is a common name that we use in Mexico for the agave plant.

You cannot put into grammar what a specific kind of acidic flavor or lactic flavor, tastes like to really understand and make the beverage.

You really have to feel it in your body.

♪ SLOW, SOFT MUSIC ♪ (Maegan) In our language, in Tohono O'odham language, Cuk-Son means black base.

There's black rocks at the bottom of A Mountain so that's how it got it's name.

I'm learning my language in this process, how we call things by our language.

I'm learning the Spanish version as well, but it just makes me wanna walk through this door that I have no idea is on the other side.

I have a sense of it.

It's an ancient, ancient room that I'm asking to be led into.

(Jesus) Her, this tremendous eagerness to learn.

But even though she comes from the reservation and rural area, her upbringings been in the city and it's been for me a pleasure to try to get her to rope her in and to do more.

(Maegan) By doing this, I'm bringing it back, I'm breathing a little bit of life into it, and I have a son so I can pass that on to him.

And he may have children in his life and he can pass that on utilizing my time here on Earth for people that aren't even born yet.

That's what I hope is that it keeps going.

(Jesus) And I think that's been very satisfying for me and for her to try to combine this knowledge, the things that she knows from her grandparents, from her mother, and she only knew them too, from stories talking in the kitchen table.

(Maegan) Agaves should be recognized for its survival, its durability Its givingness to humans and animals.

And if we keep growing, if we keep talking about it, if we keep being compassionate to our environment and encouraging these plants to grow here and everywhere, we'll have we'll have food.

We can feed people.

(Tom) To learn more about the Agave Heritage Festival and see events for their 2025 celebration this April, visit the website at agaveheritagefestival.com.

To help combat a widening economic gap, organizations like I am You 360 are finding creative ways to provide housing to underserved populations in our community.

Their focus is on building tiny home communities for kids who've aged out of the foster care system.

Our current new build, which we call the small home experience, is 450 square feet.

It is eco friendly.

We're building with Mickey BLOCK, which these homes will be here for 100 plus years to come.

They're one bedrooms.

They'll have a kitchen, a dinette, as well as a washer and dryer.

There has been a band aid on the underserved population and many of them have been muted or they used to be categorized as the forgotten children.

I think a lot of people just didn't know how many children are in foster care.

in Pima County.

How many are experiencing homelessness and what they are experiencing during this time.

If you're aging out of foster care, there's so many victimizations that hover over our children.

I Am You 360, through our movement was all about educating and creating awareness.

So there's a host of things that we have to kind of navigate through so that their outcomes are better.

[Baby cooing] When I turned 18, my mom kind of like, she kicked me out and it was like really hard and I was trying.

I was staying at like some of my other family members houses and it was just like really like toxic, like the the situations and the household.

So I had talked to Desiree and we had like set up an interview, and that's how I was able to get into the program to become a resident.

There's not a lot of resources out there, especially because especially when you're in the foster system, they just, once you turn 18, they just throw you out there and they expect you to do everything on your own.

And even like even with like, people have like a little bit more help, it's still hard.

And so I think that this program is just such a blessing and it it really does help like a lot of like foster kids, like transition and become like functional adults.

(Desiree) you who have risen.

And I'm so honored.

I Am You 360 believes that they are not forgotten so that they can see themselves as valuable and also be optimist for their future.

And we want to include them in our community.

They're deserving to be inclusive and a part of a community, not just to live, but to thrive.

It makes me really happy because, like, I would have like a nice place for me and my baby to stay.

I'm looking forward to like, honestly kind of having a little bit more space and like, I can't I can't wait.

So that way she can like, have, like, her own little room.

(Desiree) We believe in building ten at a time.

And what that does, it builds community within community.

It builds camaraderie.

Is it just not like a program?

It's a community of people and we all like to help each other out.

We realize, you know, you could give someone a house, but helping them see that it's more than a house, it's a home, but then a life skill pieces have been missing.

It's not taught in schools.

And it's also a lot of the kids we're talking about do not have a support system to teach them the life skills necessary for financial sustainability.

Shes teaching us about like our credit being able to have that, like financial stability.

I plan to, like, save money so that way I can like, move into like an actual home and be like, more financially stable.

(Desiree) So they would pay a dollar a square foot because we now own that land, we would save half their rent, put that in escrow for the next three years.

So at the end of our three year program and them learning also how to save on their own, they'll have enough to purchase their first starter home.

So it is such a unique housing program.

again, to get to those root causes.

For us, that is how we stamp out homelessness, but then also have a solution.

Get to the root causes of homelessness so that we can really create that generational change and break those generational cycles.

Thank you for joining us for Arizona Illustrated from here at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we'll see you again next week.