 I'm Aron Agis. I'm the vice president of the organization. I'm in charge of vice This is an incredible event. It's a little bit like Thanksgiving's in our family as our family grows and We borrow chairs from neighbors We eat less turkey, but we each eat a little bit of it but Hope you also see how crowded we have become as a Group this year. I think we have broken another record. It's I think we will have over 350 Participants I Invited all my cousins no There isn't a lot of entertainment in Turkey lately as you know, we have an election coming Monday Sunday So tonight we celebrate sort of the the best expressions of our art together and We began that already with the incredible travel fellows reading I'm going to yank it like Kanan, but I'm not Just just think about it hundred and forty people Submitted literary translations for the travel fellows Just ask yourself. Where are they translating? Where are these people sitting and translating and look at also us? This is really an incredible moment in the Evolution of our art This is an incredible window of opportunity for us. We're really translation matters We always knew it, but a lot more of us are now becoming aware and Really we need to let everyone know and and encourage everyone to become learned Sensitive readers of international writing. That's also our job and we celebrate tonight in fact some of the best expressions of our art as They have been nominated and selected by an infinite number of juries and We will be Celebrating winners in four different Translation awards and this is already a very large number as you know, we began this year awarding an NTA for poetry and an NTA for prose But we also have of course our Lucian strike award and then we have a new Transition award that I will let Russell talk about to you So we decided to split things so that Russell is not the only one who is constantly asking you to help us So and I will do that later, but we'll first enjoy ourselves So first I will ask Russell to come and and please introduce the The the shortlist for the two awards it had the Italian literature Literary Transition Award and the Lucian strike and then we will continue with the NTAs Hi, just lost my glasses Okay, yes riches we have four awards this year which is very impressive And just recently I think it was yesterday today We got the shortlist and winner from the selection committee for the new Italian prose translation award Which is? was inaugurated this year We scrambled a little bit to put everything in place and the selection committee worked really hard very quickly and It's a five thousand dollar award. It's going to be awarded annually from now on The an owner of the donor is anonymous and prefers to remain anonymous and We are This year we it was because this was the first year we decided to make it a multi-year award catching three years worth of Published Italian fiction and and creative nonfiction in the last few years Next year when we do this in a slightly more timely fashion and give ourselves a little more time to breathe It will be just for the previous years published works but this year it covered several and The shortlist they're not in the program because I said we printed the program and these just came in Yesterday from the selection committee So let me read you the names of the five shortlisted titles for the inaugural year of the Italian prose translation award They are the day before happiness by Erri de Luca translated by Michael Moore My brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante translated by Anne Goldstein Blindly by Claudio Magris translated by Anne Milano Appel Wallachec's dream by Giovanni Orelli translated by Jamie Richards and a pimps notes by Giorgio falletti translated by Anthony sugar and What we're going to do is I think we're gonna follow the same format for all four awards So we're gonna tell you what the shortlist is then we're gonna tell you what the winner who the winner is You can applaud Then we will read a little bit about what the judges had to say Where we have those Comments from the judges we will read a little bit about what the judges had to say about that particular work And then we'll invite that person to come up and read a little bit Okay, and luckily I believe we have three out of four people here and the fourth has a designee Okay, so here we go The winner of the inaugural Italian prose translation award is Blindly by Claudio Magris translated by Anne Milano Appel Come on up and since Come on up. Yes, and since the the committee as I said was working so quickly They were managed they managed to get us the names, but not a nice description of what they thought the book about the book So I'm gonna ask and to tell you a little bit about the book in this case And then read a little bit of her translation the publisher is Is Yale University Press? Yeah, you can see Before I say I was gonna say that first it was Penguin Canada and then it was Yale University Press But before I say a little bit about the book and just read something very briefly I wanted to tell you how interesting this is to me because this was Well when I got the email yesterday morning I was about to leave for the airport and the guy was from the airport transport was just about ready to knock on my door I was shutting my computer down and That's when I got the email and I thought well Where am I gonna find something to read if I have to read and so I Scurried around and the only one that I could find was this it's not even from the published book It's a reading that I did here in Alta in 2007 which is it was one of the bilingual readings and it was before we even had a publisher for the book and after that it got Published by Penguin Canada and then it was picked up by Yale University Press So to me it's sort of like coming full circle, you know with with this particular title So anyway, the book itself it is a novel and it's been described as a let me put my glasses on if I'm gonna read this as a shifting coral monologue and that's how critics have described it and one critic and I'm talking about the Italian critics described it as a But so Luke cheeto a lucid madman because it's a the voice sounds like it's you know frenetic It's it's kind of almost like Ranting it's it's it's it goes on and on and it goes through time and space and it's it's Difficult to follow until you get the rhythm of it And it's a coral narration because it deals with different characters in different points in time But they're all kind of like every man, and that's the idea of it and on the face of it Tori the protagonist is a patient in a mental health institution So you never really know is he is he crazy is he sane or who is he and who who is the narrator of this book? And it goes on on like that. So the part that I'm gonna read to you I I'm not gonna read the whole part that I read in 2007 because that was like a 15 minute reading But I'll just read a one part from chapter a later chapter and it has to do with a figurehead There's a the figurehead becomes almost like a light motif It's repeated a lot throughout this is those of you who know Muggies's work know that the the sea is very important It's a it's a huge symbol in his work and in this particular work that the the figurehead of a ship becomes a symbolic It's both a saving figure. It's the the guiding figure that guides the ship. It's a saving figure that A drowning sailor can hang on to if the ship is shipwrecked and on the other hand It's almost like an indifferent figure a God figure because it has this look that's always looking Somewhere and you don't know where and it's indifferent to the Trials and tribulations of those on the ship. So it's looking ahead blindly if you will So this is about the a figurehead and he says this is the lucid madman talking. He says this is Galatea She was found on an African beach following a shipwreck and she was worshiped like a goddess by the by the aborigines Other figures ended up adorning inns and taverns so that the sailors might feel a little more at home Even when they were on land you see figureheads were evicted from the sea and so they manage as best they can I've discovered more than one of them displaying a coiffure in a beauty shop beauty salon window Or modeling a dress in an apparel store well disguised of course a proper mannequin, but they didn't fool me Still I pretended not to notice everyone gets by as best as they can We buried one of them read what it says here the one from the Rebecca a whaling ship from New Bedford Among the rocks by the sea Under the bones of the waves as they say in Iceland we drank beer in her honor her funeral beer Women should have one too funerals It's only fair we got drunk and sang the office for the dead on her grave of sand and stones Lude-ness to as was fitting death is lewd sorrow is lewd I'd like to piss on my grave the flowers on a grave have to be watered. Don't they I even do it when nobody can see me They are in st. David's Park on the figurehead from the Rebecca all we did was pour some beer But we didn't do it on purpose. It's just that we were a little drunk Besides the waves quickly washed it away that rank odor vanished in the salt sea air and now there's not a trace Not even the grave the tide scraped and sucked it away Maybe now she rises and falls on the open sea Corroded by the water wood that is no longer distinguishable from any other remains of the shipwreck Even a face composed of flesh soon deteriorates the fish devour it and it quickly becomes Unrecognizable an unrecognizable piece of flotsam from the sea It was I who pushed Maria on the open sea and under the sea I threw her to the sharks as food and so I was spared by them Savage teeth tore her from my arms No It was I who let her go who shoved her into those jaws all the more voracious Because her heart was bleeding and the boots get even more excited at the taste of blood the slave drivers lash out more Enthusiastically when they see red trickling down their captives back backs And so she disappeared in that shadowy sea in that darkness, but I read that sometimes shipwrecked figureheads return Maria disappeared on the open sea the ship vanished over the horizon and when I heard that it was returning to port I also heard that it was returning without her. She was no longer there They must have treacherously thrown her overboard. Of course. How could I think that one small push? I read in the catalog about a sculptor who chose his beautiful girlfriend to be the model for the figurehead of a ship on Which she was about to leave on a long voyage For her soon afterwards the longest voyage of all she died Every day he watched the sea Consolidately he couldn't believe she was dead and when the ship re-entered the port and he saw the figurehead Standing upright on the prow Identical to her he leapt into the water to go to her longing to embrace her, but he went under Water logged in dazed water in his nose and his mouth and his ears It was impossible to see the ship as it passed by to see whether she was there or not She wasn't there Eurydice vanishes. Look how beautiful. She is this Eurydice Wiping her tears with the edge of the mantle that envelops her She too is in Laspetsia the captain says we'll see if I'm able to successfully recreate her that mantle in the dark water The night the bottom of the sea I'll pull it over my head and we'll stay under there close together clinging to one another That's it Thank you, and then congratulations. So I'm also gonna Announce the winners the winner the short list and the winner of the Lucian strike Asian translation prize the The short list is for this award is in fact in the program, but I'm gonna let you know the titles just to remind you Calidasa for the 21st century translated from the Sanskrit by money row published by Aleph book company Cat town by Sakutaro Hagiwa Hagiwara translated from the Japanese by Hiraoki Sato It's a New York review books book salsa by Shia Yu translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury is a Zephyr press book and Something crosses my mind by Wang Xiaoni Translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman is a Zephyr press book also and sorrow tooth paste mirror cream by Kim Hyoseon translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi is an action books book and the winner of the 2015 Lucian strike Asian translation prize is Something crosses my mind by Wang Xiaoni translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman And I'll read And I will I will read just a little bit the blurb that the the judges asked us to put in the program This is a quote. I rushed down the stairs pull open the door dash about in the spring sunlight and quote So it begins the exquisite collection of translations by Eleanor Goodman of poems composed of the past several decades by Wang Xiaoni In what follows we are taken out into the streets and on cross current cross-country trains into villages Cities and markets we peep out through the windows of the poet's home and sense the nostalgia invoked by a simple potato Here is a poetry of the everyday writers in delicate yet deceptively simple language Written sorry written in delicate yet deceptively simple language and translated beautifully into its Like in this first collection of Wang's work to appear in English Something crosses my mind offers up the fresh refreshing voice of a poet forging her own path neither Shunning the political nor dwelling in the lyrical, but gently and resolutely exploring her world in her writing. Please welcome Eleanor Goodman, sorry there is really nothing more wonderful and more unnerving than receiving the acknowledgement and encouragement from one's peers and colleagues and role models, so I'm I'm very much overwhelmed to be in here, especially given the incredible Field this year including another fantastic translation from Chinese Steve Rabbery's Xiaoyu his salsa, which is a gorgeous translation. I hope everyone in this room buys All of the books on the list It is also very humbling to join the ranks of the people who have already received this prize including Lucas Klein who's here who's absolutely Magisterial she trends and Notes from the mosquito. I also highly recommend to everyone I want to thank Alta and Erica Mina in particular for putting this together and for providing an incredible community For all of us translation is a really lonely business You spend most of your time in front of your computer, so Thank you so much for Not just this incredible conference, but also for this Community of wonderful wonderful individuals. I Also want to thank Jim Cates And Zephyr Press for making a really Physically beautiful book It's beautifully printed. It's beautifully edited. It's wonderfully put together And I feel incredibly lucky to have somehow Stumbled into this wonderful supportive press. I also want to thank the guy who did all that Chinese singing earlier today He was Cain and Morris. He was one of my earliest serious Chinese editors and Taught me a lot. I Also want to thank someone who is not here today and that is Wang Xiao Ni She took a chance on a young at that time pretty inexperienced Translator and agreed to let me translate her work And it has been quite a journey I'll just read a few poems to give you a taste of her work Thoughts upon crossing Yunnan Boy, Yunnan Zee the Tigers retreat the Hawks retreat to the killers and the killed flee to other provinces The sky clears its lower left corner below Yunnan covers its head to sleep This red lord of the manor sleeps comfortably from the side the curves are suddenly high and round a Red body shows beneath the green robe Deeper than red deeper than cliffs deeper than the demands of seeds There is only red not fire. There is only a body not a lord The grass climbs up to the top of its head and shakes with fear The canyons teeth sparkle with lazy light The soil grows fat with clusters of corn Red Yunnan doesn't work and doesn't get flustered Now empty mountain echoes run everywhere. I Hold tight to my heart and pass through the red lead tongue Um Wanshanyi does write a lot of travel poems She writes a lot of poems from trains and part of that comes from the fact that she was born In 1955 in Zealand, which is in the very northern part of China and in the 1980s moved to Shenzhen Which is right across from Hong Kong. So pretty much it's like going from Maine to say, Arizona a very disorienting kind of Transition and she writes a lot about What you see from train windows in part because she spent a lot of time on trains cross-country trains Plowman gung tienderen He is turning over the whole mountain top with a plow. He follows behind an ox and The two reveal the earth's forehead by force A dark red wound appears the red scene after a fever passes The red that comes after punishment the red that comes after pain has been quietly survived Suddenly the small plowman disappears The just turned red mud has buried him in the mountain side His partner raises his enormous head like he's another plowman wearing an ox mask Like the pair at the front and back of the plow are brothers The tobacco seeds are still in the burlap sack. The work has just begun They stop One coughing high the other low Then dust covers their faces and everything is quiet again If you know anything about China or the history of China, you know that red is a very loaded concept term It has a lot of historical meaning and wang xianyi is a highly political poet, but she is very subtle in The way she expresses her politics as anyone living and writing in China needs to be That poem is very political as is this one Love I do That cold autumn Your hands couldn't soak in cold water your jacket had to be ironed night after night And that thick white sweater I knitted and knitted in vain was finished like a miracle Into a time when you'd wear nothing else That cold autumn you wanted to dress like a gentleman Talking and laughing we passed the days laughing and talking we mystified people both friendly and mean In front of those eyes I held your hand and thrust myself into every crevice with a conscience I should have been born a giant bird But now I must draw in my wings and become a nest Let all those unready to lift their heads see me let them see the heaviness of the sky Let them undergo a withering of the soul that autumn so cold it was poignant That unyielding and bitter love we had Moonlight is very white Yuekwang by the hen late at night the moon exposes every bone I Breathe in a pale breath The world's irritations become falling fireflies. The city is a lifeless skeleton No life can match this pure night light Open the curtains and before my eyes the universe mixes with silver. The moonlight helps me forget. I'm alone Life's last act is silently rehearsed on the swath of white Moonlight arrives on the floorboards My two feet are already pale Since this is a short poem. I'd like to just read the Chinese So you get a sense of the musicality in the original language and also of the incredibly rich materials that I Have the pleasure and the honor of working with Yuekwang by the hen Yue Liang在深夜照出了一切的骨頭我呼吸了清白的氣息人間的瑣碎皮毛變成了下墜銀火虫城市是一句死去的骨架沒有哪個生命配得上這樣蠢的夜色打開窗簾天地正在眼前交接白銀月光是我忘記我是一個人生命的最後一幕在一片宿舍裡靜靜的彩排月光來到地板上我的兩隻腳 雨仙白老 Tonight partly for my own pleasure. I chose poems that I Don't usually read and when I give readings from this book Sort of to rediscover all the incredible stuff that's that Wang Xiao Ni has to offer But this poem I always read and I like to finish with it because I think it really describes what all of us as Translators and writers and poets are trying to do And it's also a kind of expression of her own personal poetic ethos It's also one of her most famous poems Starting anew as a poet At the shortest end of the century the earth Bounces humans busy themselves like monkeys between trees But my two hands lie idle in China's air The tabletop and the wind are both pure white paper. I Let my significance happen only at home Rinsing white rice the rice starch drips like milk onto my page To be reborn the gourds extend their fingers and cry out in fear Outside the sunlight cuts with a knife heavens cold heavy snow Each day from morning to night the door is shut tight. I Hang the Sun at the angle. I need it Some people say in this town lives a person who doesn't work Fastened to the walls between two small pieces of glass the world self-combusts The tasseturn butterflies flutter everywhere the universe unknowingly leaks its secrets I Fortell the tiniest signs of trouble without eyes without hands without ears Each day I write only a few words Like a knife Cutting into the gush of a tangerine's finely woven juice Let layer upon layer of blue light enter into a world that has never been described No one sees my light finely woven strand by strand like silk in This city I Silently serve as a poet Thank you. I Mean honestly what beside this would you rather be doing? Wasn't that incredible the National Transition Award is a tradition at Alta and This is as I mentioned before the first year That we decided to start awarding two separate Awards making two separate awards so I will start with the short list for the NTA in poetry and then we will move to the Shortlist and the readings obviously and the reading for the prose by the way Most of these titles are available at the bookstore and please do consider Getting your own copies Okay, so for the NTA awards we received 120 titles this year Formidable number because this is a quite a scrutinizing Competition we as you know we evaluate texts both in terms of their Consumit quality in the Translation but also for their Relationship to the original so it's a rigorous process and we congratulate everyone who We're even nominated and definitely of course those who have made it to the short list and then the winner So this year for poetry We have Breath turn into time stead by Paul Selan Romania Translated from the German by Pierre Joris Guarding the air selected poems of Guma Harding By Guna Harding Sweden translated from the Swedish by Roger Greenwald Black widow press I'm sorry the Breath turn into time stead was published by Farah Strasen Jiro Wallace space by Ernst Meister Germany translated from the German by Graham Frust and Samuel Frederick from wavebooks In the illuminated dark by Tuvia Rubner translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Svia back University of Pittsburgh Press and And Sheds by Jose Floretape translated from the French by John Taylor the bitter oleander press and this year's Award the inaugural Poetry NTA Award and goes to Breath turn into time stead by Paul Selan translated From the German by Pierre Joris who could not be with us, so Jaron Rottenberg will read for him Yeah, what what a great pleasure and what an honor to be here for Pierre Who asked me first of all to thank all those Responsible for thinking of him and both Selan and the award a project that for Pierre Joris has gone on I Think for something like a half Century or you know approaching the better side of 40 years 40 years to 50 So a lifetime project I first met Pierre Joris when He was just graduating from Bard College and friendship grew over the years and then Many collaborations with him on on translation on assembling anthology like books So there's a closeness there, but I've also watched over the years as He's grown as a Poet and the thinker about poetry a thinker about translation We're a concept of what he calls nomadic Poetics, but also a view of poetry reaching out across continents and and worlds He is from Luxembourg But his chosen language for writing is Is English? you know American English that has been Welcoming to other poets who have come from other places from other languages Entering into our own So Pierre is a writer of English, you know, but he's also Being Luxembourgish With English a master of four languages Luxembourgish as the mother tongue German as the first school language French as the second school language You know and English but particularly American English You know by his own will and selection at about the time a few years before, you know, I first got to know him I Had Myself done the first published translations of Paul Celan in In English In a little book from city lights books the heart of the beat generation I called new young German poets Early poems of Celan including the famous Death Fugue, but then I began to face The later poetry that was starting to emerge at that time, you know, I met Celan we spoke about further translation But I you know the Celan is so intensely You know and strangely a poet of that language, you know from a country that destroyed his family But you all know the people the Celan story, you know, and It really needed There but many translators of Celan You know, but Pierre comes at it with an almost native ear for the the German and a poet's ability to Create a version of it in another language. So I think it's a Tremendous achievement and I Feel honored To be able to honor him and to do the best that I can in in reading his his translations From the section called the list long or light duress and It's just that I read the opening poem of this selection In German and then in English and for the rest I will just read in English forgive my German Scraps vision scraps in word 1001 Day nightly the bear polka They retrain you you again become he Night rode him he had come to the orphans frock as flag No more false runs it rode him straight It is it is as though the oranges stood in the privet as though the thus written war nothing But his first birthmarked secret speckled skin muscle heep with The scrimace I drove in between Following the rivers to the melting ice home land toward it the firestone to be incised according to whose sign in the dwarf birch bomb Lemmings borrowed no later. No bowl earned no pierced necklace. No star foot fibula Unappeased unconnected Artless the all transforming slowly scraping Climbed after me Scooped with the ash ladle from the being trough soapy at The second try toward each other incomprehensibly fed now far outside our and already Wherefore heaved asunder then as a third try Blown behind the horn before the standing tear conveyor once twice thrice from unpaired butting cleft flaggy lung Larded with micro this giving given away hands the conversation spinning itself from tip to tip singed by spraying blaze air a sign Combs it together as Answer for a brooding rock art and then three poems from The section called I'm going to which he translates as tenebrate unscrupulously Against the obfuscations the hanging candlestick glows itself Downward towards us Many armed torch now searches for its iron Here's where from from human skin closeness a hissing Finds loses harsh it reads minutes long the heavy shimmering behest After the light waiver The day bright re sounding from the errand the flower some message Shriller and shriller Finds to the bleeding ear explicit wide the open parentheses hug Release the lovers also from elm root confinement black tongue ripe agony becomes loud again the glossied draws closer Thank you and honor to my dear friend Pierre Joris so for the short list for the National Translation Award in prose the titles They are actually fascinating. I in fact Thought that maybe beginning next year. We should have some kind of a Poetry project that you come up with a poem by visiting the book Exhibit because we're really getting very very good at these titles, you know The unbearable lightness of being would be jealous. I think So here are the short list finalists for the NTA in prose new wow Saharan Oasis by Ibrahim Alconi translated from the Arabic by William Hutchins Center for the Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin and of days By Jenny Eppenback translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky New directions publishing the woman who borrowed Memories selected stories by Tovi Johnson Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Steele New York review of books The next two titles actually talk to each other very nicely Why I killed my best friend by Amanda Mikaela Poole translated from the Greek by Karen Amaric Open letter books Anakarina by Tolstoy It's it's a little embarrassing by Leo Tolstoy Leo Translated from the Russian by Marion Schwartz Yale University Press And running through Beijing by Zou Zixian translated from the Chinese by Eric Abramson. I Really I did not know two lines press. I'm very very sorry, but see This is what Erica is Thank you so much Erica Indispensably all right and the winner for this year is Is a new wow Sahara no Isis by Ibrahim al-Khuni Translated from the Arabic by Bill Hutchins Bell I think the judges This microphone and I may or may not get along too great. So tell me if Sorry, I think Ibrahim al-Khuni He was a finalist for the man booker International Prize earlier this year. He's Toreg nomadic Berber who was educated in Moscow and is a citizen of Switzerland and lives in Spain Of course My translation was edited by Wendy Moore and Kristi Shuey Kristi Shuey also did the book Design and I thank them and I thank the judges I'm going to read from the opening of the book This is called the winged people and it starts with an epigraph from Pascal What? Didn't you say the sky and the birds prove God's existence? For as long as he could remember he had listened for a counterpoint in the birds song in Fact after many seasons had elapsed and the gullies had experienced numerous floods He felt certain now that this hidden birds polyphonic skill was the secret reason he had been fascinated with it over the years The birds soft gentle call which reminded him of wind whistling through reeds Could not be transcribed in any script nor could the tongue mimic it It began as a faint murmur and then a mournful cooing immediately came in and rose to a robust melody that sounded like the vibrations of the insides Lawn mournful string Harmonizing with the second lower string these two then blended together to create sadly mournfully and lyrically an epic that told the entire desert story the secretive call Created an equally secret message the song which could not be recorded by an alphabet or even pictographs And which thwarted any attempt by a tongue to imitate it began with a soft mild mysterious nebulous murmur That stirred longing and that as a crew ever louder breathed life into concealed embers into sparks That have always been the Wayfarer's law and that have always served as a religion of the wasteland's Inhabitants who since their birth have never stopped searching for what the wasteland has hidden The birds call suddenly became polyphonic is another concealed bird joined in and then this new voice Keemed a different ballad the two melodies created a counterpoint and harmonized to become a single tune a new carol Then the song changed course and soared into another realm Transforming the bare land and extending its expanse The wasteland's temptation grew ever more intense and the desert promised a new reunion an everlasting one That was born the same day the Wayfarer was and that burst into existence the same day he did Even though the Wayfarer would depart and wander off Well the promise remained the eternal Temptation endured as a hint of an impossible union and Functioned as a huge snare to lure Wayfarers to the desert and to life by flaunting a promise of an oasis and a union That would never be fulfilled in the newly expanded distance delight triumphed and the heart over flowed with ecstasy The body quivered with a dance like tremor because the glow had appeared on the horizon Because the torch had cleft the dark recesses of the pale Eternal horizon appearing for a brief glimpse as a flash of lightning and this was a sign the Wayfarer had craved for a long time And had struggled endlessly to observe then the stern hostile eternal emptiness supplied a signal like sparks of revelation And he saw what he had never seen in that expanse and discovered what he had never been able to find in fact He discovered what he had not wanted to find So how could his frail body keep from trembling ecstatically? How could a tear of longing not spill from his eye? The desert welcomes birds twice a year in the spring flocks arrive from the south spend a few days in the nomadic Encampments and then call to each other to resume their voyage to the countries of the north in the fall They come from the north spend some days in the camps again And then call to each other to travel to the lands of the south People say that in the past the flux preferred oases as migratory waste stations But that these dense throngs of birds alarmed the oasis dwellers who thought the onslaught threatened their crops So they fought off the birds set traps for them shut arrows at them and beat drums to frighten them away Then the birds abandoned the oasis and migrating flocks avoided Cultivated fields eventually choosing the desert's nomadic camps for their suppovers The desert people consider their arrival a very good omen and their sages reckon the birds landing a heavenly sign So diviners travel for quite long distances to meet the birds when the flocks arrive and Follow them for even greater distances when they depart It is said that the diviners pursue the flocks of birds to discover The enigmatic insights that the spirit world has encoded in their behavior songs and flight The diviners are not the only ones delighted by the birds arrival All the desert people go out to the open country when the first flock appears on the horizon The sages hurry out before anyone else to greet the migrating community They head to the wasteland and scattered groups striding with noble arrogance Proceeded by the leader who walks alone decked out in his ceremonial regalia Trailing the nobles are the warriors also grouped in units behind the men come clusters of women Who drag their children after them wave their babes in the air and chant cheerful ballads Trilling an epic into their children's ears Here are the birds that gave you to me last year. They've come again Here's your bill bill the egret which brought you to me returning to see you the birds are your mother The birds are your father the birds are your brothers the birds are your family The birds have come to visit their child who they have been entrusted to me the birds have come to reclaim their trust When will you be old enough to accompany the birds when will you spout wings? So the flock will accept you into the tribe and you can migrate with the birds to the land of the birds Tears of longing stream from their eyes These are the tears of desert mothers who know with the mother's intuition that when an infant is born in a homeland called The desert no mother will enjoy motherhood long because the infant whom a bird brings into the desert will Inevitably imitate the avian community and leave the nest sooner rather than later Once he departs his travels will never end the mother knows that the desert's legal system Is what the law has established and that it treats the babe in her arms as a bird Once he ventures off alone She will never be able to reclaim him from that moment on the desert will hold him in the poor fellow won't return He will never look back at the tent at the nest and his mother will have lost him for good That's why the mother holds her nursing infant high and throws him into the air the day the birds land She weeps and croons heart-rending songs in honor of this maze Because she knows with the mother's intuition that once a son has often to the desert He's not leading He's not heading off to life as all mothers hope but to a maze. He's heading into a labyrinth one from which He will never return. Thank you very much Thank you so much to all the winners and all the finalists and all the nominees for all these awards You have certainly Enriched our lives this year and we'll continue to in years to come You know, we may be just three and a half percent, but we're a very very very good three and a half percent I'd like to thank the sponsors of this particular event The poetry center at the University of Arizona Phony media There they are Thank you very much. You you've been a very wonderful host. Thank you very much and Pheno phony media And I can show you Amazon crossing Thank you, where are they there they are there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much All of you have a hand in the advancement of translation and we really thank you for all the all the support This has been a long Thursday, but we still have things to come in Declamations Not for the faint-hearted But please stay around but again, thank you very much. Thank you